/ 




POR Fl R lO DIAZ, 



A NEW ERA 'in 
OLD MEXICO 




jViva la independencia! 

— Hidalgo. 

El respeto al derecho ageno es la paz. 

— Juarez. 

Es preciso tener fe en la justicia. 

— Diaz. 



Nashville, Tenn.; Dallas, Tex. 

Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, South 

Smith & Lamar, Agents 

1905 






tffJKARY ot CONUi^tSS 
Iwo Copies rteceivci! 

JUN 21 li^05 

COPT tJ. 



COPYRIGHT, 190s 
BY 

Book Agents M. E. Church, South 



f^^°7^'^ 



[.^^ 



A Mi Esposa. 



PREFACE. 

This is not a history, but a clew to the meaning of 
history. The history of Mexico in English remains 
to be written. It ought to be written. But to write it 
is not so simple a matter as to turn off a volume like 
this. Wishing to give some account of Mexico as it 
is, after a residence there of a good many years, the 
author has found himself under the necessity of ex- 
plaining the things that are by the things that have 
been. He trusts that this book may be a guide to in- 
telligent observation and to further studies upon the 
part of others. That it may contribute to a better 
understanding between near neighbors is the hope 
that more than any other has set him the task of its 
preparation. He is aware that it is repetitious, and 
fears that it may be tedious ; yet he believes that inter- 
est in Mexico and its affairs is in our day so deep and 
so sincere among those who read the English language 
as to make welcome even a faulty and hasty volume 
concerning that country and its people. 

(V) 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 
Geographical i 

CHAPTER II. 
Products 9 

CHAPTER III. 
Population 16 

CHAPTER IV. 
Early History 38 

CHAPTER V. 
The Spanish Conquest 38 

CHAPTER VI. 
Spain in Mexico 51 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Revolution Begun 59 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Revolution Consummated 75 

CHAPTER IX. 
Evolution of the Republic 86 

CHAPTER X. 
Catholicism and Revolutions — iM.PE?.i;uM i3sr Imperio.. 94. 

(vii) 



viii Contents. 

CHAPTER XL 
The Reform Laws and the Constitution of 1857 103 

CHAPTER XII. 
The French Intervention, (i.) 113 

CHAPTER XIII. 
The French Intervention, (ii.) 1 24 

CHAPTER XIV. 
What the Republic Faced i33 

CHAPTER XV. 
Legacies of the Spanish R:feGiME 141 

CHAPTER XVI. 
The Republic Triumphant 151 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Porfirio Diaz and the Arts of Peace 160 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Thirty Years of Progress 171 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Thk Situation To-day 179 

CHAPTER XX. 
Modern Religious Movements 189 

Statistics of Protestant Missions 198 

Bibliographical Note 199 

Index 201 



A NEW ERA IN OLD MEXICO. 



CHAPTER I. 
Geographical. 

Few sections of the earth's surface containing the 
same number of square miles as Mexico have so 
great a variety of geographical conditions. On the 
whole, the country may be described as high, dry, 
and cool. This last adjective is sure to be a sur- 
prise to those who have not made conditions there 
a study. Yet it is a fact that, even in summer, the 
climate of a large part of Mexico is often uncom- 
fortably cool. The country is a great triangle, slight- 
ly curved like a cornucopia and spreading toward the 
north. Down either side, near the Gulf on the east 
and the Pacific Ocean on the west, runs a high wall 
of mountains. The western range — Sierra Madre 
del Occidente, as it is called in Spanish — is a con- 
tinuation of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Cali- 
fornia. The eastern range corresponds in a general 
way with the Rocky Mountains, though lying further 
to the east and not forming with them, by any means, 
an unbroken chain. These mountain ranges are a 
fence to the interior of the country, shutting off from 
it much moisture and the greater part of the bois- 

(0 



2 A New^ Era in Old Mexico. 

terous weather of the coasts. They divide the whole 
topography of Mexico into three sections, with fairly 
well marked distinctions of climate. The lands ly- 
ing in these three altitudes, — for it is mostly a ques- 
tion of altitude, — are commonly spoken of as hot, 
temperate, and cool. 

The hot lands, tierras calientes, are the lowlands. 
With the exception of a few valleys of the interior, — 
gorges rather, — which drop downward to levels so 
low that the tropical sun creates within them a trop- 
ical climate, these lands lie exclusively along the 
coast. They form a narrow band, widening a little 
at the northeastern corner of the republic into the 
lower valley of the Rio Grande, but, for the most 
part, less than a hundred miles in breadth, which ex- 
tends around the edge of the whole republic, except- 
ing, of course, the northern boundary. This band is 
a strictly tropical region, more than half of it lying 
south of the Tropic of Cancer. It is a flat and badly 
drained country, subject, for the most part, to heavy 
rains in their season, and then to long periods of 
drought and heat. The vagaries of the trade winds 
leave much of it poorly watered, and its natural con- 
dition is that of a somewhat arid jungle alternating 
with marsh and sluggish streams. It is the habitat of 
countless varieties of pestiferous insects, of gaudy 
tropical birds without number, of wild game and 
wild cattle which hide in its jungles, and of compar- 
atively few people. 

As will be readilv inferred from the conditions 



The Three Zones. 3 

indicated, it is by no means a healthful section. Yel- 
low fever is rarely absent, and mosquitoes and mala- 
ria abound. Only a few centers of population of any 
consequence have ever been established in these 
coastal belts, and they only because of the necessary 
business connected with the seaports. At present 
Vera Cruz, Tampico, Acapulco, and the termini of 
the Tehuantepec Railway, are the most important of 
these cities. Guaymas, Mazatlan, and Tepic are also 
places of some importance. Monterey, on the north- 
ern foothills of the great range of the east, just where 
it begins to bend to the south, is only seventeen hun- 
dred feet above sea level, and in some respects should 
be mentioned as one of the hot country cities. It is 
far from the seacoast, however, and so near to the 
higher ranges of mountains that its climate is quite 
distinct from that of the coast towns. 

Next above the hot country is what is spoken of 
as the temperate zone. It is not, for the most part, 
temperate so nearly as subtropical. It begins at an 
altitude of some three thousand feet, where the mois- 
ture flowing from the Gulf and from the Pacific 
strikes against the swelling sides of the lofty moun- 
tain ranges and pours down a life-giving flood of 
rains. Frost rarely comes to this section, which, ex- 
tending upward to fwQ or six thousand feet of eleva- 
tion according to the latitude, forms a zone of living 
green which belts the triangle of the republic from 
the northeast around by the south and up the west 
side. Similar conditions, with slight variations as 



4 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

regards rainfall, obtain on the interior of these high 
mountain ranges, especially toward the north, where 
the interior plateaus are usually less than five thou- 
sand feet in altitude. These temperate lands, so 
called, are the home of the orange and, in the South, 
of the coffee berry. Their abundant vegetation and 
countless and gorgeous flowers, as well as the splen- 
did scenery due to the fact that for the most part this 
zone lies on the mountain sides, make these lands 
ideally beautiful. The very fact, however, that it is 
mostly but a belt on the slope of the mountains re- 
duces the territory within this zone which is arable to 
such a degree that the population which it supports 
is necessarily limited. Where the topography and 
latitude allow, bananas and oranges, as well as many 
other fruits, coffee, and certain grains of the temper- 
ate zone, may be cultivated to great advantage. 

Beginning in the same altitudes with the tierra 
templada, and extending upward to the valley re- 
gions from eight to ten thousand feet above sea level, 
is the tierra fria, or cold country. The word applied 
with exactness would signify only those very high 
plateaus and mountain sides where frost must be con- 
tended with and vegetation is at a grave disadvan- 
tage. In practice, however, most of the lands of the 
great interior plateau, which has an average altitude 
of about six thousand feet, are spoken of as the 
tierra fria. Some geographers, on the other hand, 
insist that this region is, properly speaking, the tem- 
perate zone — certainly a more exact description of it 



The Great Interior Plateau. 5 

in English. Its products are precisely those of that 
section of the earth's surface usually spoken of as 
the temperate zone. It is true that they are modified 
in a large measure by the circumstance that this re- 
gion in Mexico is an interior and arid plateau. The 
development of vegetable life is not simply a ques- 
tion of the proportion between heat and cold. Other 
influences must be taken into the account, notably 
the question of rainfall and of the relative tempera- 
ture of night and day. 

This great plateau of Mexico conforms in general 
outline to the triangular shape of the country itself. 
It has been, from the beginning of its history, the 
home of the bulk of Mexico's people. Cut off by the 
high fence of mountains on either side from the 
moisture of the seacoast region, it is a land of abun- 
dant sunshine and equable climate. The rainfall 
over most of its area is not sufficient for anything 
like heavy vegetation. The water supply is further 
limited by the circumstance that this rainfall is con- 
fined to three or four summer months known as the 
rainy season. Since the stratification of the rocks 
underlying most of Mexico's interior has been great- 
ly broken and tilted from the horizontal by heavy 
volcanic action, there are on this high table-land 
comparatively few perennial springs and almost no 
permanent running streams. Over the greater part 
of its surface crops of Indian corn and beans, of 
wheat, barley, and other grains, may be raised with 
more or less certainty without irrigation. Wherever 



6 A Ne^v Era in Old Mexico. 

running streams or carefully hoarded rainfall can be 
taken advantage of for the purpose of irrigation, 
crops are absolutely assured. The unfailing sun- 
shine and the remarkable fertility of the rather sandy 
and rocky soil, which does not appear to be fertile, 
give abundant reward when the labor of the hus- 
bandman is supplemented by the water supply which 
is the one absolutely essential requisite. So essen- 
tial, indeed, is it that, in certain sections of Mexico, 
it is the custom in transferring agricultural lands to 
sell the water right and let the land go with it. 

In a general way it may be said of Mexico's high- 
lands that the rainfall, and with it the possibility of 
human habitation, increases toward the south. At 
its northern extremity the plateau is wide and dry. 
Somewhat lower than at the south, its climate is 
warmer, and the wide plains are so scorched by the 
ardent sun that they are valuable chiefly as pasture 
lands. Toward the southern extremity the whole 
land grows narrower, and the moist winds from 
either side more frequently sweep over the mountain 
tops to water the plains within. The mountains also 
there are mostly covered with heavy vegetation, and 
from them flow streams which are usually soon dis- 
sipated in irrigating the wide plains. Into this nar- 
rower and more mountainous section toward the 
southern apex of the table-land are gathered most 
of the cities of the republic. Many of them have 
grown up around rich deposits of mineral, though 
their permanent prosperity would have been impos- 



The Mountain Peaks. 7 

sible without the food supply which comes from the 
neigboring plains. 

As would be naturally inferred, these interior 
plains, high, dry, and cool, are, in so far as concerns 
the conditions of climate and health, an almost ideal 
place for the habitation of man. The climate is 
equable, the temperature rarely falling to the freez- 
ing point, and never reaching sultriness from heat. 
Indeed, the air is so dry and crisp that on the warm- 
est days one has but to enter a house or the shade of 
a tree to be instantly comfortable. 

Above the general outline of the two mountain 
ranges, which are rarely above twelve thousand feet 
in height, shoot upward three or four great volcanic 
peaks. Two of these, the best known perhaps, stand 
sentinel over the valley in which the City of Mex- 
ico lies. Between Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl 
marched the Spaniards under Cortez, and from the 
high pass which unites these snow-covered peaks 
they looked downward to the west upon one of the 
most beautiful valleys in the world. The panorama 
is a splendid one still, though the advance of civiliza- 
tion has filled the limpid air about the City of Mex- 
ico with dust and smoke. On either side of the coun- 
try stands a mountain looking out to sea. One peak, 
Colima, constantly sends forth a banner of smoke 
which may be seen far out on the Pacific. From 
time to time it becomes an active volcano pouring out 
ashes and flame. On the east, Orizaba, eighteen 
thousand feet high, in shape an almost perfect cone, 



8 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

clothed with four thousand feet of perpetual snow, 
stands bathing its feet in the tropic sea by Vera 
Cruz. It is like Fujiyama in Japan in the circum- 
stance of running the whole gamut of vegetation 
from the sea level to the snow line. It also resem- 
bles Japan's famous peak in the perfection of its sym- 
metry. It excels it in range, however, as it stands so 
far south that the vegetation at its base is strictly 
tropical. It also overtops it several thousand feet 
in height. Besides these more noted peaks is the vol- 
cano of Toluca, as it is called, whose ragged and 
narrow crater, seamed with lava set off by a tracery 
of snow, looks down upon the thriving little capital 
of the state of Mexico. These snow-capped moun- 
tains add a finishing touch to the romantic and at- 
tractive scenery of Mexico — a country which sup- 
plies a greater variety of natural growths and of 
scenic efifects than any other on the North American 
continent, or perhaps in the world. 



CHAPTER II. 
Products. 

From the beginning of its history Mexico has 
been known as rich in minerals. It was the rumored 
abundance of gold and other precious metals which 
lured on the Spaniards there as well as in the other 
countries which became the scenes of their adven- 
turous invasions. Yet both previous to the conquest 
and at the present time the chief resources of Mex- 
ico have been agricultural. By virtue of its surpris- 
ing variety of climate, nearly all the products of both 
the tropic and the temperate zone find their home in 
some part of the republic. The chief reliance of its 
people for food has ever been Indian corn. The dis- 
covery of this cereal by the Europeans who came to 
America has added vastly to the well-being of the 
world. Mexico is also the native habitat of the to- 
mato, the potato, and the tobacco plant. 

The primitive method of availing themselves of 
Indian corn is still in vogue among the people ot 
that country. The grain is soaked in weak lye or a 
solution of lime till the outer coat is softened and par- 
tially dissolved. It is then washed, and, while still 
moist, crushed between two stones. The nether mill- 
stone of this primitive mill is a flat slab, set in a 
sloping position, over which the upper millstone, in- 
stead of being turned, is rubbed back and forth. The 

(9) 



10 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

product of the grinding is not meal, but dough, which 
is then patted thin and baked over an open fire with- 
out salt or other condiment. This is the food of the 
bulk of Mexico's population. Next in order of eco- 
nomic value for the feeding of the people comes the 
bean (frijol). The brown bean, of several species, 
which is cultivated throughout the whole country, 
both lowlands and highlands, is boiled and eaten to 
the accompaniment of the thin corn cakes. If the 
family is well to do, these boiled beans are also fried 
in lard before being served. It is an extremely poor 
man whose dinner consists of only one of these two 
elements. Yet one or both of them is sure to appear 
on the table of even the wealthiest and most cultured 
of Mexican families. 

In some of the highlands, where the conditions of 
soil are favorable, wheat is sown. More generally 
still, on account of its hardiness in resisting cold, is 
planted barley. The green splotches that the chance 
traveler will see far up the sides of the high moun- 
tains toward the timber line are usually of barley. 
It can be coaxed to an altitude several hundred feet 
higher than the hardiest varieties of Indian corn. 
In the tropical and subtropical regions of Mexico 
sugar cane is extensively grown. Also, where con- 
ditions favor — that is to say, where a sufficiency of 
water can be obtained — in the tropical sections rice 
culture is beginning to be common. The cultivation 
of cotton, which always commands a high price in 
Mexico on account of its universal use among the 



The " Century Plant." i£ 

laboring people for clothing, has been greatly ham- 
pered in recent years by the ravages of the boll wee- 
vil. 

Besides these products common to other lands, 
there are one or two almost peculiar to Mexico, 
which are of notable economic value. The principal 
of these, as regards at least the value of its product, 
is the maguey, or agave. This plant, resembling the 
aloe, produces an enormous quantity of starchy 
growth from which may be extracted alcoholic liq- 
uors. In the regions adjacent to Mexico City it is 
the juice of the plant, slightly fermented and called 
pulque, which is consumed. In other sections the 
alcohol which the plant contains is extracted by dis- 
tillation, and goes under the name of mezcal, or te- 
quila. These latter liquids are heavily charged with 
alcohol and very deleterious in their effects if drunk 
freely. This same plant, with one or two other re- 
lated species, furnishes a very fine fiber which is com- 
ing to be a commercial product of no little value. 
This fiber, spoken of under the general name ixtle, 
was produced during 1902 to the value of $1,706,- 
892. Closely related with the plants producing it is 
the henequen, of which the product in Mexico the 
same year, 1902, amounted in value to $16,937,809. 
There are other fibrous plants in Mexico which will 
be utilized in future, when their merits are prop- 
erly known. One of their products of special merit 
is a fine grade of paper. So far the development 
and utilization of these fibers have languished some- 



12 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

what for lack of satisfactory machinery for the ex- 
traction of the fiber from the succulent leaves. 

Within recent years much attention has been 
drawn to the cultivation of coffee in Mexico. Cof- 
fee, rubber, and oranges have been the occasion of 
many investments on the part of foreigners ; it may 
be added, also the occasion of many disappoint- 
ments. All these, including also bananas, are so 
exacting in their requirements of climate, soil, and 
cultivation that the sum total of the conditions nec- 
essary for their exploitation is hard to obtain. And, 
often, when it is obtained, there is a vital defect in 
the situation caused by lack of transportation facili- 
ties. The coffee plant is extremely sensitive to cold. 
It must be also protected from the tropical sun. It 
must have a liberal supply of water. The berry, 
when mature, requires most careful handling; and, 
after all, it may be found that the soil, in a section 
where all these conditions are satisfactorily met, is 
such that the product is deficient in flavor. Like 
tobacco, there is an elusive somewhat in coffee, im- 
parted by a certain savor and delicacy of soil, which 
can only be discovered by experiment, and can, 
by no means, be duplicated where conditions are 
unfavorable. There are a few sections in Mexico 
which produce coffee of a very high grade. Un- 
fortunately, those yielding the best quality are ex- 
tremely limited and so situated that extensive culti- 
vation is impossible. 

The raising of citrous fruits and bananas will 



The Labor Supply. 13 

probably be greatly developed in the future. Or- 
anges and lemons will stand the somewhat rougher 
climate of the high plateau, and there are extensive 
regions of the flat tropical jungle that might be 
profitably cultivated in bananas. The lack of trans- 
portation facilities has hitherto limited the produc- 
tion of all these various fruits, and the clog of im- 
port and export duties has not encouraged the ship- 
ping of Mexico's products to other countries. The 
cultivation of the rubber plant, — or plants, for there 
are several, — is still in its experimental stage and 
confined to the southern extremity of the republic. 
The difficulties to be solved have to do chiefly with 
the labor supply and the matter of transportation. 
The climate where these plants will grow is un- 
healthful and enervating for the white races. The 
Mexicans native to that section are averse to phys- 
ical exertion, and up to the present no satisfactory 
plan for supplying the necessary manual labor has 
been devised. The transportation facilities are for 
the most part equally inadequate. 

At the end of this chapter is appended a table of 
the agricultural statistics of Mexico for 1902. This 
has been found to be scarcely a typical year, since 
most of the products were greater in other seasons, 
notably in 1898, which was a year of good rainfall. 
However, these statistics are given, since they are 
the latest available. 

The mineral wealth of Mexico has been notorious 
through all its history. In silver, especially, it has 



14 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

excelled, having produced a quantity of this metal 
during the time of the Spanish occupation which is 
simply prodigious. Some mines seem inexhaustible 
still. From time to time new ones are discovered. 
Within recent years old and abandoned workings 
have been reopened by virtue of modern and eco- 
nomical processes of reduction. In gold it is not 
quite so rich, though the annual output is of consid- 
erable value. Copper and quicksilver form impor- 
tant elements in the total mineral product of the coun- 
try. It has iron mines in only a few places. But 
one of its deposits of this metal, the iron mountain 
at the side of the city of Durango, is one of the 
most famous in the world. It is a longitudinal hill, 
about a mile long and four or five hundred feet high, 
composed of almost absolutely pure magnetic iron 
ore; the largest single lump, it is believed, in the 
world. 

The monetary circulation of Mexico is on the sil- 
ver basis. This makes a large demand for the white 
metal at home. Mexico's silver coins also circu- 
late extensively in China, Japan, and other parts of 
the Orient. In spite of this, however, the ratio of val- 
ue between silver and gold has steadily declined 
within recent years, a matter that has seriously 
cramped the financiers of the Mexican republic. The 
development of that country has nevertheless gone 
forward with unusual rapidity during the last two 
decades, due principally to the fact that in the early 
eighties several lines of railway were completed, 



Some Statistics. 



15 



traversing most of its territory, and greatly fa- 
cilitating the shipment and sale of its products. 
These railways have also contributed to the settle- 
ment of political and military disturbances, and 
have thus become one of the most important 
agencies in promoting the present era of peace. Sta- 
tistics of the mining products are appended along 
with those of agriculture. 

Products in 1902. 

(Value in Silver.) 



Rice $ 2,540,233 

Barley 4.916,523 

Corn .78,411,844 

Wheat (8,428,400 bu.) 24,522,429 

Beans ..„.. 13,328,903 

Chickpeas i>797>587 

Sweet potatoes 421,670 

Potatoes ,_. , 580,844 

Dried red peppers. . 3,244,239 

Sugar 17,103,760 

Sirup 7,141,529 

Juice 2,735,940 



Peanuts $ 3S5»739 

Cane brandy 7,028,616 

Corn brandy 954, 197 

Mezcal 2,530,81 2 

Tequila. 1,183,686 

Pulque 6,267,680 

Henequen (120,114,- 

500 pounds) 16,937,809 

Cotton (49,564,659 

pounds) 8,629,109 

Ixtle 1,706,892 



1 90 1. 

(Statistics for 1902 defective.) 



Coffee $ 8,733,778 

Chocolate 1,622,844 

Tobacco 3,009,874 

Vanilla 1,372,462 

Rubber 344.H5 

Oranges 723.597 



Bananas $ 445,792 

Tomatoes 1 13,607 

Gold i4»595.93i 

Silver 65,554,875 

Copper 24,631,289 

Lead , . . .. $,602,075; 



CHAPTER III. 
Population. 

Since the early part of the fifteenth century, the 
population of Mexico has been made up principally 
of three elements. Occupying the superior place 
among these, in wealth, education, and power, have 
been the Spaniards and their pure-blooded descend- 
ants. For a time these were not counted one class, 
but were divided into Spaniards and Creoles — that 
is, those who had actually been born in Spain, and 
their descendants born in "New Spain," as it was 
then called. Very early in the history of the re- 
lation of the Spaniards with Mexico began the habit 
of intermarriage with the native population. The 
children of mixed blood, called Mestizos, have mul- 
tiplied with the passing of the years until, at present, 
they form a second large element in the population. 
The third, a sort of substratum, as it were, is found 
in the native races. The Indian tribes of Mexico 
were quite numerous at the time of the conquest; 
one usually reputable authority placing the popula- 
tion at sixteen millions, doubtless a very consider- 
able exaggeration. 

Taking up these several classes in their inverse 

order, the first thing to be said of the Indians is 

that their origin is shrouded in mystery. Physical 

and linguistic peculiarities point to a kinship with 

(i6) 



Are the Mexicans Japanese? 17 

the Pueblo Indians of Arizona and California. 
There are certain racial indications which hint 
vaguely of connection with the Japanese. It would 
not be a difficult supposition to explain the pres- 
ence of these peoples on the western coast of Amer- 
ica by the coming of some prehistoric clan across 
the ocean on the warm Japanese current. The tra- 
ditions of the Mexicans point, without exception, 
to the north as the direction from which their fathers 
migrated to the Mexican plateau. There can be 
little doubt that those early peoples, who marked 
the valleys of Arizona with their irrigation canals 
and left their dwelling places to puzzle the archae- 
ologists of our day among the barren cliffs of the 
New Mexico mountains, were connected with the 
tribes which, later migrating toward the south, built 
up the civilization of the valley of Mexico. 

Just which were the aboriginal tribes of Mexico 
cannot be clearly made out. Ethnologists of that 
country who have made the subject a matter of 
study hold that at least three separate migrations 
swept over the greater part of the southern end of 
the plateau. Some believe that the first of these 
came from the south, its tribes identical with the 
highly civilized peoples found by the Spaniards in 
Peru. It seems more likely, however, that the In- 
dian traditions are correct, and that, one after anoth- 
er, the early tribes came down the Pacific coast, 
across the Sierra Madre del Occidente, and thus into 



i8 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

the highlands of the interior, where each left traces 
of its occupancy. 

Among the earliest of these were the Mayas. 
This tribe has left most of its more notable monu- 
ments on the peninsula of Yucatan, into which low 
and sultry region it was forced by a more warlike 
and less civilized tribe, which later took its place 
and defaced its records on the central plateau. In 
Yucatan there are to this day extensive remains in 
architecture and hieroglyphic inscriptions which tes- 
tify to an advanced stage of civilization on the part 
of the Mayas. The language has been preserved in 
a somewhat fragmentary form, but all attempts to 
decipher the picture-writing hidden away in the jun- 
gles of Yucatan and Central America have been un- 
successful. After the Mayas came the Nahoas, the 
most prominent tribe of which division were the 
Toltecs. It is true that some writers believe that the 
Mayas themselves were of the general division called 
Nahoa, though there is so much confusion as to 
their language and history that nothing definite has 
been determined. 

The Toltecs and other better-known tribes of the 
Nahoa division unhesitatingly trace their origin to 
the west, their early traditions plainly teaching that 
their tribe reached the interior plateau from the di- 
rection of the Pacific. Their traditions, to which 
the early historians give the weight of history, — and, 
indeed, they did exist at the time of the conquest in 
a sort of picture-writing, — trace the whole itinerary 



The Nahoas or Toltecs. 19 

of the migration from southern California to the 
valley of Mexico. There they rapidly developed the 
arts of civilization. The tribes of this division of ab- 
origines appear to have been of a pacific temper. It 
seems quite within the range of probability that their 
migration from the valley of the Gila River was due 
to the pressure upon them there of savage neigh- 
bors. The elaborate plans for protecting their homes 
and the products of their labor which may yet be 
seen in the cliff dwellings of Arizona point in the 
same direction. They were an agricultural people, 
not inclined to the barbarities of war. In Mexico, 
however, thrown into contact with the robust and 
energetic tribes which had preceded them, notably 
the Zapotecs and Mixtecs, — fragments of a general 
racial division made by some historians under the 
name of Mecas, — they developed a vigorous national 
life. The period of their greatest prosperity was 
only a very brief time preceding the arrival of the 
Spanish. They had extensive and well-built cities 
at Tollan (Tula) — from which place was derived the 
name Toltecs — Cholula, and Teotihuacan. They un- 
derstood the raising arid manufacture of cotton, 
wore clothes, hats, and sandals, and were a tall, 
sprightly people, devoted still to agriculture and pa- 
cific pursuits rather than to war. 

From some uncertain quarter, apparently the 
west, came a migration, immediately succeeding the 
Toltecs, which built up upon the fragments of their 
cities a vigorous military government, When these 



20 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

were about to reach the summit of their civilization 
and strength, the third or, as some beHeve^ the 
fourth general migration reached the central Mex- 
ican plateau from the west. These were a group 
of five or six tribes, called by some historians Na- 
huatlacas. The most famous of these tribes later 
became the Aztecs, who derived their name from 
having migrated from Aztlan, or *'land of herons." 
This name doubtless referred to some laguna toward 
the west of what is now Mexico, some think to Lake 
Chapala in the state of Jalisco. 

The Aztecs have become for modern times the 
typical Mexicans. The facts of the case, however, 
seem to be that they and their sister tribes reached 
the valley of ]\iexico, then inhabited by a mixture 
of Toltecs, Otomis, Chichimecs, etc., after having 
fought their way through numerous settlements fur- 
ther west, with nothing in the way of civilization 
except a tolerably perfect tribal organization, tre- 
mendous racial vitality, and a warlike temper, which 
latter proved to be their chief asset in first making 
a place for themselves among the civilized tribes 
about them, and later making a fierce stand against 
the Spanish invaders. Upon their arrival in the val- 
ley of Mexico they were so exhausted from constant 
traveling and fighting that they were forced to take 
refuge upon a rocky island in Lake Texcoco. There 
they built themselves huts of reeds, and lived on the 
fish and game in which the lake abounded. The 
soothsayer of the tribe had settled upon this island, 



Coming of the Aztecs. 21 

because he found there what had been indicated as 
the final resting place of their migration, a Mexican 
eagle sitting on the flat leaf of a nopal cactus (opun- 
tia) devouring a snake. This symbol has become 
the Mexican coat of arms. 

The Chichimecs, a warlike people themselves, had 
rapidly absorbed enough of Toltec civilization to de- 
velop a vigorous government. It was somewhat 
of the nature of a kingdom, though the king, — or 
kings, for frequently there were more than one, — was 
really no more than an Indian sachem. But as the 
wealth of the people increased and their tribal cities 
became more extensive and substantial, the naked 
warriors who had formerly taken the field with bow 
and spear came to understand the military strength 
which inheres in the substantially built city. Thus 
their larger towns soon came to be military centers, 
and the tribute which they exacted from the neigh- 
boring tribes increa'Sed the wealth of the governing 
bodies and made military organization and a stand- 
ing army possible. Their principal city, important 
previous to the conquest, was Texcoco. 

Meantime, the Aztec tribe, warriors to begin with 
and made all the hardier by their life as hunters and 
fishermen on the lake, rapidly multiplied and began 
to make inroads upon the agricultural regions adja- 
cent. Their reed huts gave place to more sub- 
stantial buildings of adobe, and later even of 
stone. Whether they brought with them the 
skill in the builder's art which made such prog- 



22 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

ress possible, or whether, as seems more prob- 
able, artisans came to them from the neighboring 
cities, especially those representing the then down- 
trodden but somewhat highly civilized Toltecs, it 
is impossible to determine. At any rate, whether 
by virtue of their own skill in the arts of peace 
and war or by means of what they learned from 
their neighbors, their island city rapidly grew into 
a vigorous stronghold, soon rivaling, in both wealth 
and military strength the neighboring capital of the 
Chichimecs. For a time these rival governments 
engaged in fierce conflicts. Later, peace was made 
by the intermarriage of what had now become the 
royal families. By the time the Spaniards came, 
the reigning chief of the Aztecs was the practically 
undisputed ruler of the whole valley of Mexico, and 
of numerous tribes in the neighboring mountains, 
which preferred accepting his rule to risking an in- 
vasion by his warriors. 

This brief account of the peopling of the country 
will be followed up in a later chapter. It seemed 
necessary here, in order to give the reader some 
conception of the multiplied racial strains which 
contributed to the native populations of Mexico. Be- 
sides those already mentioned there were, at the time 
of the conquest, two or three other extensive fam- 
ilies of aborigines, of some of whom distinct strains 
remain to this day. The principal of these were the 
Tarasco Indians, inhabiting the mountainous re- 
gion west of the lower end of the plateau now em- 



The Tarascos. 23 

braced in the states of JaHsco and Michoacan. 
These number, it is beheved, even yet some three 
hundred thousand, and are physically of a small 
but robust and vital type. They had not acknowl- 
edged the authority of the Aztec emperor, but had a 
king of their own, with a capital and numerous other 
towns and cities. They were a pacific and agricul- 
tural people, whom Cortez reduced to subjection 
through a trick played upon their king. Besides 
these were the mountain Indians of the eastern Sier- 
ra Madre, now known under the general designation 
of Huastecos. There were also the numerous scat- 
tering and somewhat vagrant tribes of the dry plains 
of the central northern part of the country, drifting 
back and forth from Mexico into what is now the 
United States. 

Such were the ancestors of the native Mexican. 
They were Indians in the sense that they were abo- 
riginal Americans, but they bore only a slight resem- 
blance to the Indians of the Mississippi valley and 
the Atlantic seaboard. It is difficult to estimate 
with any degree of accuracy what proportion of the 
inhabitants of Mexico to-day are pure-blooded de- 
scendants of these Indian ancestors. So easily did 
the native tribes mingle with the European invad- 
ers, and so slight is the difference in complexion and 
general appearance between the native Mexican and 
the swarthy sons and daughters of southern Spain, 
that the strains of relationship at the present day 
are about as intricate in Mexico as in the United 



24 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

States. Just as here Huguenots, Germans, Scan- 
dinavians, English, Irish, and the rest, have been 
fused into one homogeneous race, so in Mexico 
Spaniard, Creole, Mestizo, and Indian have be- 
come inextricably confused. There is, however, as 
I have already said, the general division into three 
sections, namely, the people of more or less pure 
European blood, those of mixed blood, and the full- 
blood Indians. 

The Indians who live in the high mountainous 
sections and have preserved their languages and cus- 
toms are, in many instances, doubtless full-blood In- 
dians still. So also many families of wealth and so- 
cial position have kept their European blood intact. 
This has been largely by the accident of association 
and local influences, rather than of purpose. There 
is practically no prejudice among the Mexican peo- 
ple either for or against the amalgamation of the 
races. Families that are of purely Spanish de- 
scent take no special pride in it, but speak of them- 
selves simply as Mexicans. Those, on the other 
hand, who have mixed or purely Indian parentage 
often plume themselves upon it. Many of the great 
men of the country have been Indians. This stock 
has exhibited and still exhibits every element which 
goes to make up the best there is in humanity. In 
view of the oppression and degradation which the 
Spaniards deliberately inflicted upon the Indians in 
the earlier centuries of their contact with them, it 
is scarcely short of marvelous that the native stock 



The Mestizos. 25 

should have shown so much of vitaUty both in num- 
bers and in producing its proportionate share of the 
great men of Mexican history. 

With reference to the people of mixed blood, it 
must be confessed that they often exhibit the well- 
known tendency to follow the vices and weaknesses 
of both sides of their ancestry rather than their vir- 
tues. This has been due, however, not solely to the 
accident of blood. Their anomalous position in the 
nation has had its effect. The Spaniards and their 
descendants have been to some extent a caste. In- 
dians who are Indians, especially since Mexico 
achieved her independence, are proud of it, and hold 
doggedly to their racial integrity. They are also, 
to a large extent, agriculturalists, and lead the hardy 
and independent life of sons of the soil. Between 
these two extremes are the people of mixed blood, 
who form the bulk of the population of most towns 
and cities. They are the servants, the artisans, and 
the detached element in the population generally, 
without the strengthening influences of wealth or 
family position, and subject to the insidious tempta- 
tions which beset a servile class. They should con- 
stitute the great middle class of the people. But 
Mexican society has for four hundred years been or- 
ganized in such a way as to eliminate the middle 
class. Those, therefore, who should by rights be 
members of it are constantly oscillating between at- 
tainment to the standing and privileges of the rul- 
ing class and subjection to the accepted poverty and 



26 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

submission of the lower. They affect to despise man- 
ual labor, a weakness that has always been exhibited 
by the upper class in Mexico, and thus often under- 
take to live by their wits when they should depend on 
honest toil. The thievery and general unreliability 
which are frequently harshly attributed to the whole 
Mexican people have really grown out of this unset- 
tled position of a large element in the population 
of the cities and towns. The Federal census of 1900 
estimates that the Indians constitute thirty-eight per 
cent, of the population, the people of mixed blood 
forty- three per cent., and those of pure European 
blood nineteen per cent. 

The Spanish language is in general use through- 
out the country. A few of the Indian tribes still 
speak their native languages, and many individ- 
uals among them, especially in remote mountain re- 
gions, are ignorant of Spanish. But with one or two 
exceptions these languages have not been reduced 
to writing, and even when this has been done, the 
slender opportunities for culture open to the In- 
dians have prevented any notable literary use of 
them. The result is that Spanish is the language 
of the literature and business affairs of the whole 
country, the Indian dialects lingering stubbornly 
nevertheless. Some of these — the Aztec, or Mex- 
ican, the Otomi, the Tarascan, and the Huaste- 
can, among others — are well-organized languages, 
quite capable of a flexible and literary use. The 
Spanish one hears in Mexico is pure Spanish, though 



Mexico and Egypt. 27 

exhibiting one or two slight pecuharities in the pro- 
nunciation and having in common use a large num- 
ber of Indian terms, together with not a few provin- 
cialisms. 

In their manner of life, both in city and country, 
the Mexicans have much in common with the peo- 
ple of western Asia and northern Africa. So man- 
ifest is the resemblance to the latter that, taken with 
certain traits of the stone carving and architecture 
of the pre-European period, it has suggested to 
many a racial connection with Egypt. The ingen- 
ious theories propounded to account for this, such, 
for example, as the revival of the myth about the 
buried continent of Atlantis, have not commended 
themselves to careful students. It seems more prob- 
able that such resemblances as antedated the coming 
of the Spanish were purely accidental, and that the 
rest are to be accounted for by the strong Moorish 
influence in Spain about the time of the conquest of 
Mexico, and the similarity in climatic conditions 
between the dry mesas of Mexico and the arid pla- 
teaus east and south of the Mediterranean. The 
domestic animals, the utensils, the pastoral atmos- 
phere and phraseology, the manner of building hous- 
es, stables, granaries, sheepfolds, and the like, are all 
so similar to what obtained in Palestine two thou- 
sand years ago, that a visit to Mexico serves as an 
instructive commentary on the Bible. 



CHAPTER IV. 
Early History. 

It will be interesting to follow up briefly the be- 
ginnings of Mexican history as outlined in the pre- 
vious chapter. The earliest inhabitants of the coun- 
try who were sufficiently civilized to leave traces of 
their existence were, as has been stated, the Mayas. 
The origin of this race is unknown. They lived 
principally in Yucatan, though some believe that at 
one period they occupied also the interior of the 
country. After them came the Nahoas, the princi- 
pal tribe of which, the Toltecs, reached a state of 
civilization which resulted in the building of cities 
and the impression of their culture upon their suc- 
cessors, the various tribes of the Chichimecs. Both 
these and the Nahoas traced their origin to the west ; 
some think the southwest — that is, South America; 
others believe that they came, as did the Aztecs later, 
from California or Arizona. 

Last of all was the irruption into the fertile val- 
leys of the lower apex of the Mexican plateau of 
seven kindred tribes from Arizona and regions 
thereabout. Of them the best known came to be 
the Tecpanecas, Tlaltolecas, and the Aztecas. The 
latter arrived last of all, their fellow tribes having 
preceded them and settled mostly in the valley of 
Mexico, as it later was to be called. This is a large 

(28) 



Early Aztec History. 29 

basin in the mountains, containing a series of fresh- 
water lakes terminating at the bottom in a salt lake, 
Texcoco. Near the margin of this lake the Tec- 
panecas already had their capital, Azcapotzalco — 
now a suburb of Mexico City. 

Thus it came about that when the Aztecs arrived 
and, under the direction of their medicine men, set- 
tled upon a rocky island in Lake Texcoco, they found 
themselves in a region claimed by their cousins the 
Tecpanecas. These had developed a vigorous gov- 
ernment with a king or chief in Azcapotzalco. The 
Aztecs accepted allegiance under this king, paying 
tribute each year of fish and ducks from the lake. 

Meantime, other branches of this same migra- 
tion having settled adjacent to the capital city of the 
Chichimecs, Texcoco, situated on the eastern side of 
the lake, for a time admitted the sovereignty of its 
king. Later, when they had grown strong and self- 
reliant, they threw off his authority, fought among 
themselves, and brought on a period of great con- 
fusion. Then a shrewd Chichimec king adopted some 
new-comers of the same stock into his tribe, married 
his sons with their daughters, and thus braced his 
tottering throne by a hardy, civilized, and warlike 
addition to the population. Such was the state of 
affairs when the Aztecs, tiring of their position 
of subjects to the king of Azcapotzalco, and having 
themselves grown numerous and built up their island 
city, — which they called Tenochtitlan, — elected a 
king or chief of their own and forced the Tecpanecas 



30 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

to recognize them as allies instead of subjects. It 
was not long, of course, before war broke out be- 
tween them and the king of Texcoco. Their capitals 
were on the same lake, not far apart, and irritating 
conflicts of authority were not wanting. So fierce 
and successful were the Aztec warriors, under young 
Moctezuma, that they soon vanquished the Chichi- 
mec king and began to force their way to the very 
front among the various tribes of the valley of Mex- 
ico. 

During something like fifty years, the latter part 
of the fifteenth century, they were engaged in a 
series of bloody w^ars, mostly wars of conquest. So 
fierce and arrogant did they become that if a tribe 
dared to offer resistance to their arms^ or refuse 
tribute to their king, nothing prevented their going 
at once to reduce it, unless it was at such a distance 
from their capital as to make the expedition seem 
futile. The huge multitudes of captives which they 
brought back from their forages seem to have been 
the original prompting of the bloody rite of human 
sacrifice which so shocked the Spaniards on their 
arrival a little later. Something had to be done 
with these captives. Many became slaves and col- 
onists. Others were too brave and dangerous to be 
left alive. Nothing was more natural than that a 
warlike people should have as one of their deities a 
God of War. So by easy stages came about the 
sacrifice of war prisoners to him. Some even sus- 
pect that these bloody rites involved cannibalism. If 



Human Sacrifices. 31 

so, it was of tfie nature of a religious ceremony. 
There is no reason to believe that the high-minded 
warriors of Mexico ever ate human flesh because it 
pleased them as an ordinary article of diet. 

The human sacrifices were a sad and bloody af- 
fair. Only the heart of the victim was offered, and 
it was believed to be more acceptable living than 
dead. Hence the ceremony consisted in extracting 
and holding it up before the grewsome image while 
still throbbing. For this purpose the condemned 
prisoner was held upon his back on a huge stone, one 
of which is still to be seen in the National Museum, 
his head strained downward by a heavy stone yoke 
on his neck, while the officiating priest opened his 
chest with an obsidian knife, rudely tearing out the 
palpitating heart. The Spanish priests and soldiers, 
with that fondness for exaggeration which never 
forsook them, gave most unreasonable and impos- 
sible estimates of the number of victims thus sac- 
rificed from time to time. 

Moctezuma from being the commanding general 
of the army was later made king, since he was of 
royal blood. After extending the power of his 
tribe throughout almost the entire valley, he died 
in 1469, and was succeeded by his grandson, Ax- 
ayacatl. After twelve years, Tizoc, brother of Ax- 
ayacatl, succeeded him and began the construction 
of a new and sumptuous temple to the God of War, 
Huitzilopochtli. Dying himself of poison in i486, 
he left the conclusion of it to his younger brother 



32 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

and successor, Ahuitzatl (beaver). Having, ac- 
cording to a custom, waged a campaign of conquest 
to celebrate his accession, this new king brought 
back a swarm of prisoners to be victims in hon- 
or of the dedication of the temple. The chron- 
iclers would have us believe that twenty thousand 
(some go as high as eighty thousand) were sacri- 
ficed. The number is not merely incredible ; it is sim- 
ply impossible. A brief calculation on the terms of 
their own narrative, which says the ceremonies last- 
ed four days, will show that the number of victims 
could not have gone beyond three or four thousand. 

This dedication of the temple of the War God 
took place in 1487. The vast concurrence of peo- 
ple, the shedding of so much blood, the throwing 
out to decay of so many corpses, the general ex- 
citement and relaxation of the occasion, produced, 
so it seemed, and so it may well be believed, a whole- 
sale demoralization of the capital city, ending in a 
pestilence. Such a religious festival was a melan- 
choly degeneration from the clean and wholesome 
rites by which the Toltecs, and even the ancestors of 
the Aztecs, a peaceful and agricultural community, 
adored the sun as the origin of their blessings and 
offered to him the first fruits of their harvests. 

Five years later Columbus touched the shores of 
the New World. The savage and warlike monarch 
who had presided over this dedicatory ceremony, 
slaying himself the first victim, had continued his 
course of war and conquest. His people learned to 



Moctezuma II. 33 

work in the soft stone which was discovered near 
the shore of their lake about that time, and buih 
still more ample and substantial edifices in the cap- 
ital city. In 1499 it was a victim of one of the great 
rain storms that visit that region from time to time. 
The other lakes in the valley empty into Texcoco, 
which, having no outlet, rose on this occasion higher 
and higher till it overflowed all the lower stories 
of the city's houses. The king, happening to be in 
a basement when the water began to pour in, ran 
out hastily, striking his forehead against the low 
doorway, a blow from which he never recovered. 
At his death, three years later, another Moctezu- 
ma was made king — Moctezuma Xocoyotzin (the 
younger). 

This Moctezuma was a great-grandson of the one 
who had been a famous chief previously. Elevated 
to the position of supreme power at the age of thirty- 
four, after he had become famous as a soldier, and 
w^hile exercising the prerogatives of high priest in 
the temple of the God of War, he became a tyran- 
nical and autocratic ruler, with exalted conceptions 
of his own dignity and importance. With his army 
he at once went upon a campaign of conquest to ob- 
tain prisoners for the human sacrifices that were to 
mark his accession to the throne. Having subdued, 
one by one, the tribes in the adjacent valley, he and. 
his generals later sought occasion to declare war 
against the vigorous republic of Tlaxcala. The peo- 
ple of Tlaxcala were one of the kindred tribes from 
3 



34 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

the North, who, having settled a Uttle further east 
in a beautiful valley among the mountains, had de- 
veloped a vigorous government republican in form. 
The Mexicans invaded this republic on some pretext, 
but really because the ambitions of their king de- 
manded its subjugation. But the Tlaxcalans were 
people of the same hardy stock, and by surprising 
the invading army in the mountain passes they in- 
flicted upon it a disastrous defeat. The attack was 
followed by a second, even more formidable, which 
was also repulsed with great loss to the invaders. 

Domestic affairs then for a time claimed the at- 
tention of the Mexican king. He extended the 
buildings of his capital city, brought fresh water in 
from a spring at the foot of the hill of Chapultepec 
on the neighboring main-land, and took such meas- 
ures as were possible to relieve his people after the 
ravages of a fierce drought. From time to time he 
renewed the war with Tlaxcala, and also sent out 
more than one expedition against the Indians of 
Michoacan. Of both these independent enemies of 
the Mexican emperor, as some historians have cho- 
sen to call him, there will be occasion to make men- 
tion later. The people of Tlaxcala became friends 
and allies of the Spaniards when they arrived, and in 
all likelihood saved the little army of Cortez from 
annihilation. 

Far to the west, among the green mountains of 
Michoacan, was the independent monarchy, if so dig- 
nified and serious a term is admissible, of the Taras- 



The Tarascan Kingdom. 35 

cans. Their king had his capital on the margin of 
Lake Patzcuaro, one of the most beautiful fresh-wa- 
ter lakes on the American continent. Embowered in 
pine-clad mountains, it is still surrounded by a neck- 
lace of towns inhabited mostly by full-blooded Tar- 
ascan Indians. The town, which was at that time 
the capital of an extensive government — though one 
that was not at all compact in its organization — is 
now a somewhat dilapidated village; still called, 
however, by its ancient name of Tzintzuntzan, or 
"place of humming birds." A great painting by the 
Spanish master, Titian, said to have been the gift of 
one of the kings of Spain to the Indian king of Mich- 
oacan, still hangs in the parish church. The efforts 
of Moctezuma to reduce this tribe of Indians to sub- 
jection to his Mexican empire were as fruitless as 
were his attacks upon Tlaxcala. The Tarascans 
were not a warlike people, but were too numerous 
and too secure in their mountain fastnesses to be sub- 
dued by any military expedition which Moctezuma 
was able to send against them. Such was the situa- 
tion in Mexico at the time of the Spanish invasion. 

Much has been written, first and last, concerning 
the civilization, languages, customs, and state of ad- 
vancement of the Mexican Indians at the time of the 
conquest. Certain it is that they had developed an 
admirable calendar, had mastered some of the funda- 
mental principles of architecture in stone, and had 
devised civil institutions concerning the elaborateness 
of which there are many and various opinions. The 



36 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

early records left us by the soldiers and ecclesiastics 
of the invading Spanish forces are so frequently 
contradictory, and in many respects so manifestly 
exaggerated, that they do not command absolute cre- 
dence. In contrast with their exaltation of the civ- 
ilization and power of the native races was the unrea- 
sonable urgency on the part especially of the priests 
to destroy and obliterate all records and evidences of 
the religion and civilization which had preceded their 
advent. The social and political institutions of the 
people were, according to a well-known law, largely 
the outcome of their religious faith ; and the best pos- 
sible gauge of their quality would be a study of the 
religions upon which they were founded. But the 
Spanish priests were unhesitating in their belief 
that all the religious rites, ceremonies, temples, 
and records were a work of the devil. They 
therefore destroyed them, right and left. As 
usually happens, the priests of the aboriginal re- 
ligions were also the learned men of the different 
tribes, and such records in picture-writing, and the 
like, as existed were usually written and kept by 
them. This treasure of accumulated manuscripts 
(in parenthesis it may be remarked that the In- 
dians understood the manufacture of an excellent 
grade of paper made of maguey fiber) was almost 
completely lost to the world through the zeal of men 
who could not understand that, in order to convince 
people of other faiths of the truths of Christianity, 
it is well as far as may be to accept their own reli- 



Mexican Agriculture. 37 

gious ideas as legitimate in their sphere and as hav- 
ing in themselves also a basis of truth. 

In spite of the fact that at the time when America 
was discovered by Europeans the Aztecs and their 
neighbors had developed into a warlike and power- 
ful nation, it is true still that the Indian tribes of 
Mexico were essentially agricultural in their habits. 
They were not mere wandering warriors living by 
rapine and the chase, as were so many tribes inhab- 
iting the territory which is now the United States. 
Before the coming of the Spaniards they cultivated 
corn, beans, chocolate, pepper, tomatoes, cotton, on- 
ions, garlic, pumpkins, various succulent roots, and 
a number of different nuts and fruits. The Span- 
iards added comparatively little to the aggregate of 
agricultural products, only bringing in wheat, barley, 
and oats, with a few kinds of fruits, and introducing 
domestic animals and better tools. It is interesting 
to note that the plow which they brought is the 
Moorish plow, and dates back in northern Africa and 
Asia to prehistoric times. It may be seen in Mexico, 
unchanged to this day, an evidence of the conserva- 
tism of the people and of the unfortunate fact that 
they remain yet almost in the same state in which 
they found themselves immediately after the Spanish 
conquest. With that conquest we must now deal. 



CHAPTER V. 
The Spanish Conquest. 

No more hardy band of adventurers ever landed 
upon an alien shore than the company which, under 
the lead of Hernando Cortez, drew to land on the 
2 1 St of April, 15 19, inside the rocky island of San 
Juan de Ulloa and on the sandy beach where now 
stands the city of Vera Cruz. This point had been 
visited a little more than a year before by Hernandez 
de Cordova, who, with Juan de Grijalva, had ex- 
plored the coast of Yucatan and the adjacent islands, 
turning back at last from the shore of the main-land 
with stories of an immense empire, rich in gold and 
precious stones, which lay far in the interior. 

Cuba and other West Indian islands had been set- 
tled by the Spaniards in the years following the voy- 
ages and discoveries of Christopher Columbus. In 
151 1, Diego Velasquez, who, from having been a 
servant in the house of Diego Columbus, brother of 
Don Christopher, became later the colonial governor 
of the island of Espanola, w^as transferred to the 
larger island of Cuba, recently vanquished by the 
Spanish arms, taking with him, among others, his 
private secretary, Don Hernando Cortez. This 
young man was a native of the Spanish city of Me- 
dellin, where he was born in the year 1485. Run- 
ning awav from school at the age of sixteen years, 

(38) 



Early Years of Cortez. 3$ 

he had, after various difficulties, secured passage to 
the New World, where, on the island of Santo Do- 
mingo, he was living as a farmer and land-owner at 
the time when his friend, Don Diego, was made gov- 
ernor of the island of Cuba. In the skirmishes which 
preceded the settlement of this new government he 
distinguished himself as an intrepid soldier, and 
when the lands and slaves captured in the conquest 
were divided among the followers of the governor 
general, he received a large assignment of both in 
the province of Santiago. 

The voyages of discovery among the islands and 
along the peninsula of Yucatan mentioned above 
were undertaken under the direction and at the ex- 
pense of the new governor general of Cuba. Having 
become convinced by the reports brought back by 
his two captains that there were great opportunities 
for procuring booty on the main-land of Mexico, he 
organized a new and larger expedition under the spe- 
cial pretext of sending it in search of Grijalva, who, 
having gone out with one or two ships on an explor- 
ing trip, had not been heard from. Velasquez was 
much concerned to find a proper captain general 
for this new and somewhat formidable expedition. 
It was of the utmost importance to him that both the 
glory and the booty of the voyage should be his. Yet 
it was easy to see that the man having charge of it 
might put himself into communication directly with 
the royal government of Spain, and thus rob the real 
promoter of the expedition of all credit that might 



40 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

accrue. For it was well known that the Spanish gov- 
ernment was as greedy for added territory and added 
spoils as any of the ardent adventurers who crossed 
the waters in this crusade. After much hesitation, 
the governor finally decided to offer the command of 
the expedition to his friend and former secretary, 
Don Hernando. They had not always been on good 
terms, and one disagreement had well-nigh proved 
serious for the adventurous secretary. But his abil- 
ity was w^ell known to his superior, who, after all, 
was chiefly interested in the success of the expedi- 
tion. 

So, toward the year 15 15, the ships of the new 
flotilla were gathered at Santiago de Cuba, from 
which point they sailed away, stopping for a week 
at Macaca, and a little later at Habana. The fleet 
consisted of eleven ships carrying five hundred and 
eight soldiers, thirteen of them armed with muskets 
and thirty-two with crossbows, sixteen horses, ten 
pieces of brass artillery, and four falconets. The sol- 
diers had been recruited under the royal banner of 
Spain, beside which Cortez had the presumption 
to raise another in imitation of that of Constan- 
tine, bearing a cross with this inscription in Latin: 
"Friends, with true faith let us follow the cross, for 
thereby we shall conquer." 

On the peninsula of Yucatan they picked up a cap- 
tive Spanish priest and a few natives. Among these 
was an Aztec slave girl named ^^larina, who still re- 
membered well her native language. She also knew 



The Founding of Vera Cruz. 41 

Maya, the language of her captors, in which she was 
able to converse with Father Aguilar, the priest, who 
had learned it during his captivity. She was of at- 
tractive person and sprightly intellect, and became a 
devoted attendant of the captain general. When ne- 
gotiations with the Aztecs were later entered upon, 
she translated their messages into Maya for Father 
Aguilar, who then gave them to his captain in Span- 
ish. Long before the conquest was consummated, 
however, she had herself acquired the Spanish lan- 
guage. 

Landing on the shore of Mexico where it is pro- 
tected by the rocky island of San Juan, Cortez 
shrewdly took advantage of the Spanish law giving 
a certain power of autonomy to municipalities, and 
founded the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz — that is, the 
Rich City of the True Cross. The proper officers 
were elected according to the royal law, and, as sym- 
bolic of the power of the new government, a gallows 
was set up, and hard by a picket for exposing the 
heads of those who should be executed. There is a 
grim significance about these finishing touches in the 
organizing of the first ayuntamiento on Mexican soil 
which will not escape the reader. So soon as the city 
government was duly established the captain general 
resigned to it the commission he had received from 
the governor of Cuba. He was promptly elected 
commander in chief, and at the same time appointed 
civil governor. Thus at one stroke he cut himself 
loose from every obligation to Velasquez and put 



42 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

himself at the head of all the powers, both civil and 
military, of this newest of Spanish colonies. 

Cortez soon decided upon the bold and daring step 
of destroying his ships. Having selected two or 
three of his most faithful and loyal friends, he sent 
them with one ship and its crew to report directly to 
the King of Spain, giving him an account of the 
expedition and protesting the loyalty of his new col- 
onists. Then, in the month of July (1519), having 
removed from the ships all the sails and cordage 
and all metals that might be of service in building 
others, he sent them to the bottom. Such were these 
hardy sons of a race which in that day had no supe- 
rior in physical and intellectual vigor and in all the 
traits which go to make up the successful soldier and 
explorer. The courage, the calmness, the resource- 
fulness, the endurance, both physical and moral, dis- 
played by Cortez and his men, during the two years 
following this reckless act, form a contrast to the 
qualities found in the soldiers of Spain to-day which 
is worthy of careful study. 

Meantime, the Mexican king and his court were 
shaken with the most profound anxiety. Moctezu- 
ma, though he had been a bold and successful war- 
rior in his youth, had been much affected in more re- 
cent years by the superstitions and prognostications 
of the priests. He was himself high priest at the 
time of his election to the position of ruler. A tra- 
dition was current that Quetzalcoatl would reappear. 
The description of this fabled god as fair-skinned 



*'The Fair God.*' 43 

and bearded tallied so with the appearance of the Eu- 
ropeans that the superstitious king could not shake 
himself clear of the feeling that the Spaniards were 
divine. Their muskets, their cannon, and the terrible 
horses on which they mounted and rode to victory, 
augmented this supernatural impression. Some of 
the priests who had but recently essayed the role of 
prophet had interpreted certain mystic signs and in- 
cidents to signify that the king, Moctezuma, was 
soon to be destroyed. In view of all these things, he 
had fallen into a profound melancholy, and instead 
of boldly preparing to resist the encroachments of 
these invaders, he began to send them embassy after 
embassy with the anxious request that they leave him 
in peace. To secure their compliance, these mes- 
sengers went loaded with gold and precious stones. 
These presents, far from encouraging Cortez and his 
followers to leave Mexico, served rather the purpose 
of loadstones to attract them more and more. Scarce- 
ly anything in history is more humiliating than the 
consuming avarice which, like a burning thirst, drew 
the Spanish invaders on wherever they touched the 
New World. 

On the 1 6th of August, 15 19, followed by his own 
troops, except a small garrison which he left in Vera 
Cruz, by several thousands of the inhabitants of 
Campoalla, a neighboring town, and some hundreds 
of Indian burden-bearers dragging his artillery, the 
Spanish captain set out in the direction of the interior 
highlands. His army consisted of four hundred foot 



44 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

soldiers, fifteen cavalrymen, and six pieces of artil- 
lery. 

On the way to Mexico lay the republic of Tlax- 
cala. Its people were not friendly to the Aztecs, and 
after they had suffered a series of bloody defeats due 
to the superiority of the Spanish arms, they at last 
made an alliance with Cortez to help him against 
Moctezuma. Thus reenforced, the Spanish rapidly 
advanced upon the valley of Mexico. The first town 
of importance belonging to Moctezuma's domain 
was Cholula, which they captured and pillaged with 
inexcusable brutality, the Tlaxcalans wreaking their 
hatred upon hereditary enemies. 

Pressing forward as autumn drew on, despite con- 
stant protests from the Aztec king, early in Novem- 
ber Cortez reached without further serious fighting 
the island city of Tenochtitlan, before whose gates 
the now intimidated monarch met him. Having pre- 
sented himself in state before Cortez, who received 
him with the brusque frankness of the soldier, he told 
the Spaniards that since they had come from the 
East and were evidently sons of the sun, Mexico 
looked upon them as the rightful rulers of those lands. 
(The worship of the sun had long been a primary ele- 
ment of the native religion.) A day later, November 
lo, 1 5 19, Cortez returned the official visit and entered 
the sacred city. Under the guise of reasonable curi- 
osity he carefully examined its approaches, streets, 
buildings, and natural defenses. Several of his fol- 
lowers, as well as the captain himself, have left ac- 



Cortez Reaches the Capital. 45 

counts of Tenochtitlan as the Spaniards found it. 
Bernal Diaz, Alonzo de Ojeda, Andres de Papia, 
Alonzo de Mata, and an anonymous conquistador, all 
wrote descriptions of the city which agree in their 
essential particulars. It was substantially built, of 
mud bricks for the most part, but with some struc- 
tures in stone, along streets which on the east and 
south terminated in the lake, while to the west and 
north several of them were continued in causeways, 
extending to the main-land but bridging frequent ca- 
nals through which canoes might pass. 

Having been assigned a spacious palace as a place 
of residence, the Spaniards made themselves at home 
in Mexico, setting up an altar for their worship and 
fortifying their house. As if further to excite their 
cupidity, an evil fortune led them to discover a se- 
cret door in the palace which had been turned over 
to them, which, on being broken open, revealed a 
treasure-room containing a large quantity of gold. 
About this time word reached Cortez of a disastrous 
battle in which his Vera Cruz garrison had engaged 
through coming to the support of their neighbors, 
the Campoallans, against an Aztec army. A number 
of the Spaniards, including their commander, Juan 
Escalante, were killed, and one taken prisoner. The 
Aztecs sent the head of this prisoner all the way to 
Mexico, that their king might be convinced at last 
that these invaders were not immortal beings. Ad- 
vised of this, Cortez called a council and appeared 
with several of his leaders before Moctezuma, charg- 



46 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

ing him with treachery. The king made the very just 
reply that the conduct of his soldiers in their cam- 
paign against a rebellious province was not under 
his immediate supervision, but that he would sur- 
render the commander of these troops, with his prin- 
cipal officers, to the Spaniards so soon as they re- 
turned. When, true to his promise, he had done this, 
Cortez, after investigating the incidents of the death 
of his fellow-countrymen, though, with the exception 
of one prisoner, they had been slain in warfare, nev- 
ertheless condemned the general with his son and fif- 
teen of his principal associates to be burned alive. 
This cruel and inexcusable sentence was carried out 
in the presence of Moctezuma and his people, and 
the king himself was henceforth kept a prisoner in 
the palace of Cortez, loaded with chains. He con- 
tinued to beg Cortez to withdraw, insisting that his 
people were reaching a state of mind such that he 
could not be responsible for the consequences. 

About this time Cortez and Moctezuma each heard 
with no small satisfaction that ships had arrived off 
Vera Cruz. The Indian king took it for granted 
that as the Spaniards now had ships they would at 
once sail away to their own country. Cortez was 
pleased, because he expected to find in these new 
arrivals the recruits which his messengers to Spain 
had sent out. Both were destined to be soon unde- 
ceived. The new arrivals proved to be a fleet of fif- 
teen vessels, bringing some eight hundred soldiers, 
which had been sent by the governor general of 



He Recruits His Army. 47 

Cuba. The messengers of Cortez to Spain had, con- 
trary to his orders, touched at Cuba on their way, and 
Velasquez, perceiving at once, from the accounts they 
brought, the purpose of Cortez, had organized and 
sent this expedition to arrest him, that he might 
secure for himself the fruits of the voyage of con- 
quest. 

Leaving Pedro Alvarado with a small garrison in 
Mexico, Cortez set out at once with such of his own 
troops as he could gather — for many of them had 
been dispatched to interior towns — and marched rap- 
idly to the coast. His hardened veterans made a 
fierce onslaught by night on the sleeping city of Vera 
Cruz, now in possession of the new arrivals, captured 
the commander, and secured the surrender of his 
troops. There were few lost on either side, the whole 
result of the movement being the addition of this 
new force to the army of Cortez. Scarcely any other 
episode in the history of this daring adventurer dis- 
plays him to greater advantage. 

In possession now of a respectable army, he at 
once began to send detachments hither and thither 
throughout the country in order to establish formally 
his position as its ruler. Scarcely had he begun to 
plan these new measures, however, when word came 
to him that his little garrison in Tenochtitlan was 
hard pressed and in need of immediate succor. This 
had come about mostly through the stupid cruelty of 
Alvarado, who had without provocation murdered 
a multitude of prominent people there, 



48 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

Cortez, hurrying back, arrived in Mexico June 24, 
1520, greatly to the reUef of his beleaguered lieuten- 
ant. He visited upon Alvarado, however, no severer 
punishment than a reproof for his conduct. But, 
thoroughly ashamed of it, he declined to see Mocte- 
zuma, and, in order to propitiate somewhat the peo- 
ple, liberated a brother of the king that he might help 
to quiet the disturbed city. This brother, however, 
who was of a vigorous and warlike spirit, instead of 
quieting the insurrection, did all in his power to pro- 
mote it. Within twenty-four hours after being liber- 
ated, he advanced to attack the Spaniards with a 
huge army. Then began the bloody struggle in the 
streets of the Mexican capital which resulted at the 
last in the complete defeat and ignominious retire- 
ment of the invaders. 

For five days the attack went on. Finding himself 
hard pressed, Cortez undertook to take advantage of 
the influence of Moctezuma as in a critical moment 
Alvarado had done. The king again ascended to the 
roof of the palace where the Spaniards were forti- 
fied, and exhorted his people to desist. The sight of 
him on this occasion, however, instead of quieting 
only irritated them the more, his own nephew call- 
ing out in a loud voice that he was no longer their 
king. This youth then bending his bow sent an ar- 
row flying at the unhappy captive, and the shower of 
stones and arrows which followed drove Moctezuma 
mortally wounded from his place. The Indians re- 
newed their attack with redoubled bitterness. 



**La Noche Triste." 49 

The position of the Spaniards finally becoming in- 
tolerable, Cortez decided to force his way out. Pro- 
viding his troops with a movable bridge for spanning 
the gaps in the causeway, he led his little band forth 
at midnight. Before they were fairly started, how- 
ever, the huge tom-tom on the high Teocalli alarmed 
the city, and the attacking host swarmed upon them 
like angry bees. That was the famous Noche Triste, 
or mournful night. Cortez at dawn sat down, weary 
and wounded, under a cypress which is still shown, 
and shed tears over the gallant men left behind, some 
dead, others prisoners — a fate worse than death, for 
these were destinied to be sacrificed before the dread- 
ful God of War. 

Harassed by the Mexicans, whom they constantly 
repulsed with huge slaughter, the Spaniards slowly 
retiring reached the city of their allies, the Tlaxcal- 
ans. Here they rested during the winter, recruited 
somewhat in numbers by the crews of chance ves- 
sels arriving at Vera Cruz, which crews Cortez al- 
ways managed to attach to himself. 

The next summer, 1 521, he again attacked the cap- 
ital. This time the city was approached by water, 
as well as by land, the Spaniards having built and 
launched a number of brigantines. The warlike 
brother of Moctezuma, who had succeeded him, had 
died of smallpox, a new scourge brought by the Span- 
iards, which decimated the whole Aztec empire. He 
had been succeeded by Cuautemoc — *'last of the Az- 
tecs" — a valiant and high-spirited youth, one of the 
4 



50 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

most romantic figures in history. The melancholy 
story of how he lost his kingdom and his life may be 
read in the pages of Prescott. It need not be detailed 
here. A noble bronze statue of him, surrounded by 
figures which are a grim commemoration of some of 
the crudest deeds of the Spaniards in that time of 
blood, stands on the famous Paseo de la Reforma, 
placed there by the government under Porfirio Diaz. 
In August, 1 52 1, the city of Tenochtitlan passed 
into the hands of the Spaniards. Since that date it 
has been known as Mexico. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Spain in Mexico. 

For exactly three hundred years, from 1521 to 
1 82 1, Mexico was reckoned a province of Spain and 
called Nueva Espana, New Spain. From the year 
1535 onward the administration was vice-regal. The 
viceroys, though their terms were limited at various 
times by royal decrees to six and even to three years, 
virtually had unlimited tenure of office, since these 
decrees were systematically disregarded. Autocrat- 
ic in power, they were nevertheless subject to the 
whim of the King of Spain, who could depose or re- 
call them at will, and to the supervision of a self- 
perpetuating royal council associated with him called 
El Consejo de las Indias. They were trammeled also 
by an Audiencia at the seat of their government, a 
sort of court of review, ostensibly appointed to au- 
dit their accounts and see that the royal treasury re- 
ceived its due share from the income of the province, 
but becoming with time a check upon their actions 
and a medium of communication between the people 
and the court of Spain. At one time, for exam- 
ple, a viceroy had occasion to borrow three millions 
of dollars. The money was cheerfully lent by the 
merchants of the City of Mexico, since, as one of 
their own historians remarks, the system of checking 
the accounts of these representatives of the Spanish 

(5') 



52 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

throne was so strict that the lenders ran no risk of 
losing their money. 

It is unhappily to be recorded, however, that so 
unbounded were the prerogatives of the viceroys, and 
so vague is the border line between government and 
oppression, for abuses inflicted by these officers upon 
the people at large there was virtually no redress. 
The native population was indeed looked down upon 
by the Spanish crown itself to such a degree that 
treatment of them which would have been thought 
intolerable if inflicted upon Europeans seemed to 
their Spanish majesties to call for no special censure. 

These natives of Mexico labored from the begin- 
ning under at least three great disadvantages. First, 
they were "infidels." A great deal of the cruel hos- 
tility with which the Mohammedan Moors had in- 
vested that term lingered in the so-called Christian 
theology of Spain. It originated the Spanish Inqui- 
sition in the very years in which the government of 
that country's colonies was taking shape. It justi- 
fied barbarities in the administration of that govern- 
ment, and even in the propagation of the Christian 
faith, that the clearer vision of a later day sees to be 
quite out of harmony with the Christian spirit. Sec- 
ondly, the Indians of Mexico were to the governing 
Spaniards of alien race. Race hatred was not so 
acute in the commingling which took place in that 
country as it has been in many others, yet it was nev- 
er wholly absent. In the third place, the Indians 
were helpless. Only one or two tribes of them had 



Early Catholic Missions. 53 

developed a warlike temper, and these had been sub- 
dued by the overwhelming superiority of European 
arms. The remainder were, almost without excep- 
tion, pacific and timid. They yielded to their op- 
pressors without resistance, almost without protest. 
Not to abuse a situation like that, where the owner- 
ship of fertile lands and of princely deposits of min- 
erals is involved, is not in human nature, least of all 
in Spanish human nature. 

The leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, es- 
pecially of the great religious orders within that 
Church, made haste to enter upon the undertaking 
of converting these gentle pagans to the true faith. 
In this the soldiers, having altogether mechanical 
notions of the nature of true religion, cheerfully as- 
sisted. They even made it a pretext for new cam- 
paigns of conquest, and had the assurance to adorn 
the banners which waved over some of their bloodiest 
and most inexcusable ventures with the cross of the 
gentle Christ. The story of their manner of pro- 
moting the cause of Christianity is enough to bring 
a blush to the cheek of any Christian who reads it. 

The missionaries, it is true, were often, especially 
in the beginning, self-denying and devout men. They 
were a little narrow, to be sure, and broke up idols 
and destroyed records that would be of inestimable 
value now had they been preserved. Some of them, 
notably Fray Bartolome de las Casas, became ardent 
and fearless champions of the Indians and their 
rights as against their oppressors. A Mexican paint- 



54 A New Bra in Old Mexico. 

er, in a powerful canvas which now hangs in the San 
Carlos Academy in Mexico City, has paid tribute to 
las Casas as the "Protector of the Indians." 

Unfortunately the doctrines of the Catholic 
Church, and its practice of the monastic system, are 
not calculated to perpetuate gentleness and justice in 
the administration of missionary affairs. The teach- 
ing of implicit obedience, for example, paid under 
vows by the monks to their superiors and under the 
whip of the confessional by the converts to the 
priests, is one which tends powerfully to the corrup- 
tion of human nature. In addition to this, the rival- 
ries of the different orders in Mexico made each 
greedy of property and of power ; and the result was 
soon seen in such a concentration of the wealth of 
this new and fecund country within the establish- 
ments of the monastic orders as permanently to dis- 
turb its peace and well-being. As early as 1644 the 
city council of Mexico City forwarded to Philip 
IV. of Spain a formal petition to allow the estab- 
lishment of no more convents and monasteries in 
New Spain. The document declares that there were 
already so many monks and nuns there that they 
were quite out of proportion to the total population ; 
besides which, there seemed to be great danger that 
they would get possession of all the property in the 
country, of which they already ozvned half. It goes 
on to request a special order to the bishops that they 
should ordain no more priests, since there were al- 
ready more than six thousand who were absolutely 



Religious Orders. 55 

without occupation; and that steps should be taken 
to diminish the number of hoHdays, of which there 
were two or three each week, a state of affairs tend- 
ing greatly to the increase of laziness! This naive 
petition unhappily received no notice on the part of 
the court of Spain, a neglect which was afterwards 
bitterly atoned for by all concerned. The activity of 
these religious orders resulted finally in a total of 
one hundred and seventy-nine monasteries and 
eighty-five nunneries. The Franciscans led, with 
fifty-two out of the one hundred and seventy-nine; 
the Dominicans had thirty, and the Augustinians 
twenty-six. 

The vicegeral period in Mexico, though so long, 
was singularly uneventful. The administration of 
Mexican affairs during that period derived its char- 
acter from the two influences most potent in Spain, 
the Spanish monarchy and the Roman Catholic 
Church. Both these were cast in molds so fixed that 
for three hundred years their variation was insignifi- 
cant. The viceroys came and went. They rarely 
held the position more than four or five years, 
though, as has been remarked, no attention was paid 
by the Spanish crown to the limits once or twice set. 
A humane and popular man, with a diplomatic tal- 
ent equal to the task of keeping down complaints 
against himself, might remain a dozen years. Usu- 
ally, however, they returned voluntarily, or were re- 
called, after terms averaging about four years. 

It seemed to be considered one of the perquisites 



56 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

of the position that the viceroy should enrich him- 
self. He was absolute master of the financial admin- 
istration of a rich and productive province. His es- 
tablishment was an expensive affair, to be sure, but 
his salary was forty thousand dollars a year. By 
farming out the taxation, selling special grants and 
privileges, and, in spite of constant surveillance, oc- 
casionally tampering with the bookkeeping, most of 
them managed to make the office a productive one 
and to retire from it rich. 

The viceroys were in more or less constant con- 
troversy with the aristocratic land and mine owners 
and with the haughty chiefs of the Catholic hier- 
archy in Mexico. Early in the history of that coun- 
try a most pernicious system of peonage originated. 
When the land was divided off into grants by royal 
decree, — regardless, of course, of the rights of the 
Indian owners, — with each grant native laborers to a 
certain number were assigned to the favored citizen 
— ''commended" (encomcudados) to him that he 
might educate and Christianize them. As might 
have been guessecl, given the hard-hearted avarice of 
the average Spaniard of that time and his crude no- 
tion of the nature of conversion to Christianity, this 
system almost at once degenerated into slavery, pure 
and simple. In the same way the laborers in the 
mines virtually belonged to their employers, who 
controlled their food supply, administered their 
courts of law — such as they had — and represented to 
them that ominous and invisible power across the 



Las Encomiendas. 57 

sea which they hated but feared to resist. The Cath- 
olic Church, in this matter, as in many others, set a 
melancholy example which those who accepted it as 
monitor were glad enough to follow. Vast archi- 
tectural piles, churches, colleges, convents, monaste- 
ries, crowded each other in every city — almost in 
every village — built by the unrequited and forced la- 
bor of timorous converts. Huge supplies of candles 
and other accessories of the religious ceremonials 
were constantly contributed by indigent worshipers, 
only to be resold in the market and thus made to en- 
rich the priests and friars. 

The enslavement of the Indian mine laborers and 
the melancholy situation of the encomendados were 
the occasion of numerous and pointed protests to the 
Spanish crown on the part of generous-hearted eccle- 
siastics, and even of viceroys. The whole system of 
encomiendas, so often denounced, was finally abol- 
ished by royal authority, an act which, though it 
prevented the further extension of it, operated very 
slowly indeed to interfere with the feudal pride of 
men who controlled previous grants of docile slaves. 
Nevertheless, in places, mining regions especially, 
where the abuse had become particularly heinous, 
or where there was a dogged and perhaps eloquent 
prior or bishop who took the Indians' part, there 
were from time to time outbreaks of justice highly 
creditable to the Spanish crown and to the viceroy of 
the period. A few of these viceroys were so consid- 
erate of the native population, and so resolute in pro- 



58 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

moting their interests, that their names are embalmed 
in history with epithets fragrant yet of a people's 
gratitude. At the very beginning were two of this 
type, Don Antonio de Mendoza, the first viceroy, and 
Don Luis de Velasco, the second. Mendoza was so 
careful of the interests of the Indians, especially in 
connection with a plague which broke out during his 
period, that they called him "Father of the Poor." 
Velasco, who died in 1564, was universally mourned 
as the "Father of the Country." It was during his 
term that the Emperor Charles V. issued express or- 
ders that there should be no more encomiendas, and 
that those already granted should expire with the 
death of the men to whom they had been made — 
that is, should not be inherited. This order, as we 
have seen, was not immediately carried out. On a 
certain occasion, however, Velasco took advantage of 
the royal attitude toward this subject to liberate one 
hundred and sixty thousand slaves, mostly miners, 
with the noble remark that "the freedom of the na- 
tive Indians was worth more than all the mines in the 
world, and that the royal share in the income of these 
mines [one-fifth] was not so important as to justify 
the breaking of all law, both human and divine." 



CHAPTER VII. 
The Revolution Begun. 

Three hundred years after the Spanish govern- 
ment had asserted its sway in Mexico, it was shak- 
en off by that country. The immediate cause of this 
successful revolution was the Napoleonic interven- 
tion in Spain. How that disturbance served to pro- 
mote and bring to a crisis the feebly stirring senti- 
ment in favor of liberty and independence in nearly 
all of the Spanish American countries is a story that 
has perhaps never been adequately told. It will be 
sufficient here to give an outline of it in so far as it 
concerns Mexico. The essential phases of the situ- 
ation are really few, though both in Spain and in her 
American colonies the political and social movements 
of the first two decades of the nineteenth century 
seem infinitely complex. 

The success of the political revolution in Mexico 
may be explained by a single statement: It became 
possible when the Catholic Church was alienated 
from the Spanish government. All other influences 
making toward independence would have come to 
naught without this final and decisive element. The 
uprising under the lead of Hidalgo in 1810 failed 
utterly, though, as later transpired, events in Spain 
so affected the situation of Mexico that this abortive 
movement there became in fact the beginning of ul- 

(59) 



6o A New Era in Old Mexico. 

timate independence. But so great was the wealth 
and influence of the CathoUc Church, so thoroughly 
had the people of Mexico and other Latin American 
countries been trained in the habit of loyal submis- 
sion to that Church, that so long as the Church and 
the government of the mother country acted in con- 
cert there was not the slightest likelihood that any 
movement toward independence from Spain would 
succeed. It is true that the success of the English 
colonies in North America, which had set themselves 
up into the independent United States, and the far- 
reaching influence of the sentiments which had cul- 
minated in the French Revolution, had agitated even 
the submissive populations of Spanish America. 
These dim strivings of patriotism would doubtless 
have been even more pronounced than they were 
had the indigenous races been allowed to attain to 
that advanced and enlightened intellectual condi- 
tion to which their number and their native intelli- 
gence entitled them. For it was among them espe- 
cially that the love of country was essentially linked 
with the love of liberty, and to them that freedom 
and patriotism seemed one and the same thing. 

But so systematically and so successfully had the 
ecclesiastical power combined forces with the polit- 
ical and the social that the Indians, after three hun- 
dred years of so-called Christian training, were as 
ignorant and as helpless as before the Spanish came. 
The very language, which had little by little forced 
out their native dialects, was full of terms that point- 



Napoleon in Spain. 6i 

ed out and enforced then* inferiority. People of 
Spanish stock were called gente de razon, "rational 
people," whereas it was commonly accepted as a mat- 
ter of course that the reason of a peon or indito was 
not sufficient to justify any effort to educate him. 
Judge Ignacio Altamirano, one of the greatest liter- 
ary critics ever produced by Mexico, used to relate 
with great glee that he became gente de rason, though 
of pure Indian blood, because his father happened to 
be appointed alcalde of the village. When that event 
took place, the village schoolmaster decided that he 
must teach young Ignacio his letters ! 

Events that later led to the complete independence 
of Mexico, — and the story is essentially the same for 
all the Spanish American colonies, — were taking 
place both in that country and in Spain, during the 
years 1808 to 1821. Bearing in mind the decisive in- 
fluence of the Catholic Church party, which party, 
so soon as it was alienated from Spain, insured the 
success of the revolutionary movement, we may un- 
dertake in a summary way to run over these move- 
ments. 

In 1808 Napoleon, following up his dream of 
world-wide dominion, wrested the throne of Spain 
from the weakling king, Charles IV., and his even 
weaker son, Ferdinand VII. In the effort to recon- 
cile the Spanish people to this high-handed measure 
and to the government he proposed to set up, — put- 
ting his brother Joseph on the stolen throne, — he 
called for a gathering, "junta," of Spanish nota- 



62 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

bles. The Spanish patriots had been growing in- 
creasingly restive under the miserable subterfuge of 
a government into which their kingdom had degen- 
erated, and this junta, called by Napoleon, became 
the signal and type for others. Thus came about 
the remarkable movement known to history as "the 
Spanish juntas." The men composing these groups 
presently asserted their right to govern Spain. The 
juntas entered into treaties with England. They 
declared war against Napoleon. They assumed 
control of the colonies, Mexico among the rest. 
They demanded liberal concessions from Ferdinand 
as a condition of his restoration to the Spanish 
throne. They quoted from the utterances of the 
French revolutionists high-sounding principles con- 
cerning the rights of man. Most of their members 
were openly hostile to the Catholic Church. 

As the nature and purposes of these juntas grad- 
ually percolated into the thought of the colonists, 
great anxiety was awakened, and with it, among 
the conservatives at least, great resentment. The 
Viceroy of Mexico, Iturrigaray, announced the 
change in the home administration, July, 1808, and 
required the Mexican people to submit to the de- 
mands of the "junta central" at Sevilla, at the same 
time proclaiming his loyalty to the dethroned house 
of Bourbon, and especially to Ferdinand VII. He 
seems to have been under the impression that the 
junta was working entirely in the interests of Ferdi- 
nand as against the French. 



The Juntas. 63 

It soon appeared, however, that the juntas had 
many things in view besides the replacing on the 
throne of the deported Bourbons ; and when their in^ 
tentions concerning reforms, popular government, 
and the like, became known, the viceroy found him- 
self between two fires. For the Ayuntamiento of 
Mexico, which had never recognized any power but 
that of the King of Spain, with whom it was accus- 
tomed to deal directly, flatly refused to have any- 
thing to do with the juntas. In this the people, loyal 
to the crown, supported the Ayuntamiento. Some 
suggested that it would be a good arrangement to 
have Ferdinand come to Mexico, but the confusion 
and uncertainty were so great that a plan for this did 
not then take shape. Meantime the viceroy, trying to 
carry water on both shoulders, excited the suspicion 
of the Audiencia, made up as it was of ardent royal- 
ists, and was by them imprisoned and sent in chains 
to Spain. For a time his place was taken by tempo- 
rary substitutes, but in 18 10 Venegas, duly author- 
ized by the Junta Central, made his appearance in 
Mexico and took command of the situation. His dis- 
agreement with the Ayuntamiento, and with the 
large loyal element in the population, of which the 
leaders of the Church were the guiding spirits, would 
have reached an acute stage very promptly had not 
events of a most stirring nature in the politics of 
Mexico drawn away the attention of all concerned 
from the situation in Spain. For a time the question 
was not whether Mexico should be on the side of 



64 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

Ferdinand or of the junta, but rather whether or 
not she should break all connection with Spain. To 
the events which brought about this crisis we must 
now for a moment turn. 

From the beginning the Spanish administration of 
Mexican affairs had, at least from the Mexican point 
of view, exhibited grave defects. Every abuse of 
sovereign power of which the colonists in Virginia 
and Massachusetts complained was duplicated south 
of the Rio Grande. To them were added many oth- 
ers. The native population had, as we have seen, 
suffered much from various forms of slavery. One 
peculiarly exasperating development of this kind 
has not been mentioned. Various individual Span- 
iards, or associations of "Conquistadores," as they 
rather insultingly called themselves, obtained from 
the Spanish crown monopolies of sundry articles of 
primary necessity. By placing an exorbitant price 
upon these products they soon managed to have a 
large number of natives constantly in their debt. 
The old savage laws concerning debtors, in vogue 
then throughout the world, were even more savage 
in Mexico. The creditor virtually owned the debtor. 
For a poor man, a laboring man, getting into debt 
was equivalent to selling himself into slavery. And 
industrial slavery of this kind is really worse than 
domestic slavery, for if the slave is a chattel his own- 
er will take care of him so that his value may not 
diminish. But nobody cares whether a peon lives or 



Commercial Oppression. 65 

dies. He cannot be sold, and his place, if he dies, 
can easily be filled. 

The government also had certain monopolies — 
salt, tobacco, and gunpowder among them — besides 
one-fifth of the income of all the gold and silver 
mines, the sale of civil and ecclesiastical ofiices, a 
stamp tax, and a poll tax exacted only of the Indians. 
The king also demanded a share of the immense in- 
come arising from religious rites for which the peo- 
ple paid the priests vast sums. In addition to all 
these abuses, the viceroys and their subordinates de- 
liberately planned to return to Spain rich after even 
a brief administration, a thing which nobody seemed 
to think amiss. Indeed, the viceroyalty was much 
sought as a means of recouping the fortunes of de- 
cayed aristocracy. What financial burdens all this 
imposed upon the productive population of Mexico 
may be imagined. The people were also forbidden 
to compete with Spain by raising grapes or olives, 
or by erecting factories for the production of any 
article important to the manufacturing interests of 
the mother country. Moreover, Mexico could nei- 
ther buy nor sell in any market save that of Spain, 
from whose ports all her shipments had to come 
and to them all her exports be sent. The disastrous 
effects on commerce of such laws need not be de- 
scribed. 

In the summer of 18 10 a little company of patriots 
banded together in the city of Queretaro to discuss 
plans for freeing Mexico from Spain. The move- 
5 



66 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

ment seems to have had no immediate connection 
with the disturbances then taking place in the Span- 
ish government, but to have been a growth from 
slowly accumulating sentiments of patriotism and 
from the stirring of the principles of popular liberty 
then so generally sifting through the thought of the 
world. The group was made up of men in the vari- 
ous walks of life, — two of them soldiers, a pair of 
lawyers, a physician, some merchants, etc. They 
were not generally Indians, or even Mestizos. The 
Creoles — that is, Mexican-born Spaniards — had been 
so much discriminated against by the government, 
and were so commonly looked down upon socially 
by the governing classes and the "old Spaniards," 
that they had come to identify themselves almost en- 
tirely with the other elements in the native popula- 
tion. They held themselves above the Indians, of 
course, but at the same time felt themselves to be 
Mexicans and not Spaniards, a feeling which is very 
pronounced among them at the present time. 

The Queretaro group, knowing how important it 
was to conciliate the Church, and feeling the need of 
an intelligent leader, made advances to Father Hidal- 
go, curate of the little village of Dolores, some sev- 
enty miles to the north of their city. Hidalgo had 
been educated at the Colegio de San Nicolas, in Val- 
ladolid (now Morelia), the oldest college in Amer- 
ica. He was a progressi\e and philanthropic man, 
and had been much annoyed by the interference of 
the government with his efforts to teach his parish- 




MIGUEL HIDALGO Y COSTILLA. 



The Conspiracy of 1810. 67 

ioners horticulture. He found the restriction as to 
grapes especially annoying, having already taught 
his people silkworm and bee culture, besides estab- 
lishing a factory of earthenware and otherwise ad- 
vancing their worldly interests while ministering to 
them in spiritual things. 

Hidalgo having convinced himself by a visit or 
two to Queretaro that the new movement gave prom- 
ise of a favorable development, at length agreed to be 
the leader of it, and with the others began systemat- 
ically to plan for an uprising. In the city of San 
Juan de los Lagos, situated in the same rich and pop- 
ulous state with Dolores, the state of Guanajuato, 
there is a yearly fiesta in the month of December. 
Thinking to take advantage of the throngs which 
would be in attendance upon it and could easily be 
drawn into a movement for independence, it was ar- 
ranged to spring the movement at that place and 
time. But in September one or two members of 
the band of conspirators, through motives which 
history does not disclose, gave information to the 
government of what was going on, together with the 
names of all concerned. The local representative of 
the Spanish government in Queretaro, holding the 
office of corregidor, was Don Miguel Dominguez. 
Without actually having given his name as an adher- 
ent, he was aware of the existence of the conspiracy, 
and friendly to it. His wife, an even more ardent 
patriot, also had knowledge of the whole movement. 
But when the conspiracy was formally and openly 



68 A New Era in Old Mexico, 

denounced to him, Don Miguel was forced reluc- 
tantly to take steps to arrest his friends. Locking 
his wife in their home for fear her zeal might out- 
run her prudence, he set out on September 14, 18 10, 
to nip the revolution in the bud. Mrs. Dominguez, 
however, was a woman for whom a mere lock and 
key signified little. She managed to call to her win- 
dow a reliable policeman, himself inclined to the 
revolutionary cause, and sent him flying to Dolores 
to warn Hidalgo. 

The priest himself, however, had been betrayed by 
a hired agent, a soldier of the regiment then stationed 
at San Miguel, a neighboring town, who had given 
information to the commander there. Hearing ru- 
mors of this, Hidalgo had sent for Captain AUende, 
the chief mover of the conspiracy, who lived in San 
Miguel (since named for him), and the two were at 
Dolores in consultation when the news from Quere- 
taro arrived. Aldama, the messenger, reached that 
village a little after midnight of September 15, 1810, 
and found Allende. Together they went to Hidal- 
go's room in the early hours of the morning of the 
1 6th, and woke him. Having heard the definite 
news, he arose to dress himself, saying coolly : "Gen- 
tlemen, we are in for it. There is nothing for us to 
do but to set out on our hunt for gachupmes^' — a 
slang term for Spaniards. ^j 

The priest's loyal friends and supporters in the vil- 
lage were hastily sent for, and in the cool September 
dawn a group of men, humble laborers and farmers. 



*' El Grito de Dolores." 69 

whose names Mexican history proudly preserves, 
soon gathered about the curato. The village prison 
was forced and the political prisoners set free. It 
was Sunday morning, and when the parish belP 
called to mass it rang out a call to liberty which 
echoes yet. For when the people came they learned 
what was going on, and the patriot priest lifted up 
his ever-memorable "grito" of ''Viva la Independen- 
cia!" Thus dramatically was launched the move- 
ment which, though it seemed soon to be blotted out 
in blood, never stopped till Mexico was free. 

Of that first outbreak, so unformed, so prema- 
ture, without military organization or equipment, 
without programme, and with a more or less vision- 
ary ecclesiastic as leader, the wonder is not that it 
failed, but that it came so near to success. The ex- 
planation, aside, of course, from the tremendous mo- 
mentum of sentiment in favor of independence, is to 
be found in Hidalgo's shrewd instinct by which from 
thevery beginninghe made it the cause of the Indians 
against the foreign invader. On that first Sunday, 
marching with his straggling mob in the direction of 
San Miguel, where with Allende's help he hoped to 
get hold of a few soldiers, as they passed the little 
village of Atotonilco and swept up the villagers who 
had gathered to mass, the patriot spied in the church 
a banner bearing the image of the Indian Virgin of 
Guadalupe. Snatching it down from the wall, he 

^It now haBgs over the door of the National Palace in, Mexi- 
co City, and is rung once a year at midnight of September 15, 



70 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

waved it before the excited multitude as their ensign, 
and to the cry of ''Long Hve the independence of 
Mexico !" he added another, to them even more in- 
telHgible and inspiring, "Long hve our Holy Mother 
of Guadalupe !" Thus the enterprise of the Catholic 
Church, which nearly three centuries before had sup- 
plied Mexico with a Virgin indigenous to the soil, 
contributed in an unexpected way to the well-being 
of the country by making it possible to combine reli- 
gious enthusiasm with patriotic fervor. To the bat- 
tle cries suggested by Hidalgo the people soon added 
another and ominous one, "Mueran los gachupines !" 
Death to the Spaniards ! In San Miguel a whole reg- 
iment of soldiers, the ''Queen's Own," was added to 
the mob of peasants, besides a welcome increase 
of arms and supplies. The people were armed with 
scythes, machetes, pikes, slings, and even hoes. On 
the 1 8th of the same month of September they swept 
on southward to Celaya, which was occupied on 
the 2 1 St without resistance, and sacked by the mob. 
Here an effort at organization was made, Hidalgo 
being appointed captain general and Allende lieu- 
tenant general. 

From Celaya the expedition turned back to the 
northwest to invest the capital city of Hidalgo's 
state, Guanajuato, only a short distance across the 
mountains from Dolores. It was, as it is still, a city 
of much wealth, having then a considerable garrison 
of Spanish soldiers and a sort of customhouse and 
treasury building of great strength, but badly situ- 



The Capture of Guanajuato. 71 

ated for defense. The commander of the troops, 
having heard of the revohition, had as early as the 
17th begun elaborate preparations to defend the city, 
calling on the people to rally to the help of the gov- 
ernment. This they did at first, but within the two 
weeks which elapsed before the arrival of the patriot 
army they had learned more of its objects and char- 
acter, and their ardor as defenders cooled. But the 
Spanish commander haughtily refused when called 
upon to surrender, and on September 28 was attacked 
by the revolutionists with such fury that he and his 
people were forced almost immediately to take refuge 
in the alhondiga. From the neighboring slopes — the 
city lies in a narrow mountain gulch — poured such a 
storm of stones hurled by slingers that defense of the 
walls soon became impossible, the gate of the for- 
tress was fired, and the invaders swept everything 
before them. Riaho, the Spanish commander, fell 
early in the engagement. During the night the city 
was plundered, but the next day Hidalgo published 
general orders reestablishing the Ayuntamiento, or 
city government, and repressing disorder under se- 
vere penalties. Availing himself of the resources of 
the city, he began to take serious measures for the 
success of his movement. He ordered the establish- 
ment of a cannon foundry and commenced to gather 
arms and supplies. Two weeks later he set out for 
ValladoHd (Morelia). 

Meantime, as may well be supposed, the vice-regal 
government was in a ferment. Venegas, the viceroy 



72 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

of the juntas, had just arrived. He was an energetic 
man, and at once issued orders to General Calleja, 
in San Luis Potosi, to go after the rebels with all 
the troops at his command. The government's army 
in Mexico was at the time made up of about ten thou- 
sand regulars and some twenty thousand provincial 
militia. The viceroy set a price on the heads of Hi- 
dalgo and Allende, and the archbishop of Michoacan 
anathematized his renegade priest publicly and by 
name, the Inquisition following suit. Hidalgo re- 
plied in a spirited proclamation, declaring himself 
a loyal Catholic still and calling on the people to 
awaken to their rights as freemen. 

To all appearances the people heeded him rather 
than the viceroy and archbishop. On his way to 
Morelia nobody resisted him, and the city itself fell 
into his hands without objection. His following 
now numbered probably one hundred thousand. He 
took possession of $400,000 which he found in the 
royal treasury at Valladolid, persuaded the ecclesi- 
astical authorities to remove the disabilities of him- 
self and his soldiers, and published a proclamation 
abolishing slavery and the poll tax. These measures 
gave him immense popularity with the Indians, and 
his army swept on unopposed toward Mexico. 

On the high ridge between that city and Toluca, 
the rim of the valley of Mexico, he met the royalist 
troops sent out to oppose him. W^iile trying to ar- 
range with them for a parley the battle broke out, 
and the viceroy's troops were soon disastrously de- 



Hidalgo's Disastrous Retreat. 73 

feated. There was nothing to hinder the advance 
of the revolutionists upon the capital, but for some 
reason Hidalgo hesitated a day or two and then 
withdrew northward. His action has never been 
fully explained. It must have been due in some 
measure, at least, to the timorous shrinking from 
bloodshed of a man unused to war. This battle was 
his first, and, though won by his troops, seems to 
have filled him with dismay. 

Near Celaya he encountered Calleja, hastening to 
the relief of Mexico, who promptly attacked and 
routed the insurgents. Hidalgo went to Morelia 
and Allende to Guanajuato. Calleja followed Al- 
lende and, defeating him again, captured that city. 
Hidalgo soon passed on to Guadalajara, where he 
was made welcome. The revolutionary movement 
had spread through the whole country. There he 
undertook the organization of a civil government, 
appointed ministers, and sent messengers to the 
United States. But the royalist troops, concentra- 
ted under Calleja, were again approaching. The fol- 
lowing of Hidalgo and of Allende, who had again 
joined him, was not much more than a mob. They 
went out to meet their enemy and again met defeat. 
The leaders made their way out to Aguas Calientes, 
thence northward to Zacatecas, and on to Saltillo, 
from which place they set out for Monclova. Hidal- 
go had been persuaded to give the supreme military 
command to Allende, — a thing he ought to have 
done at the beginning, — and they were again finding 



74 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

sympathizers in all quarters. It was only a question 
of obtaining supplies and arms, and they could soon 
gather another army. But on the way to Monclova 
they were betrayed by a young lieutenant, disaffect- 
ed because Allende had refused to advance him in 
rank, and taken as prisoners of the royalist troops 
to Chihuahua. There the local Spanish commander 
promptly condemned them by court martial, and they 
were executed, about midsummer of 1811. Their 
heads were carried to Guanajuato and exposed on the 
famous alhondiga, where they remained for ten 
years. The first chapter of Mexico's revolution thus 
came to an end. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Revolution Consummated. 

How much more wisely Hidalgo was building 
than he knew appeared after his capture. In the four 
months that intervened between that capture and 
his execution another revolutionary army had been 
formed, and two or three important victories won 
by it. When Hidalgo set out on his fatal trip from 
Saltillo to Monclova he left in command at Saltillo 
Don Ignacio Lopez Rayon, who, when he heard of 
the disaster to his chief, almost immediately started 
to make his way back toward the central part of the 
country. His troops numbered between three and 
four thousand, and on their way south they met and 
defeated several detachments of the royalist army, 
capturing a good many field guns and a quantity of 
supplies. The rich and important city of Zacatecas 
received the patriot army with open arms, an event 
which awoke the representatives of the Spanish gov- 
ernment to the fact that the revolutionary ideas had 
much more vitality than they had suspected. Indeed, 
this is the most noteworthy phenomenon of the trou- 
bled and uncertain years which followed Hidalgo's 
death. In the hearts of the common people the sen- 
timent of liberty burned like a quenchless flame. No 
sooner were the patriot armies defeated and scattered 

(75) 



76 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

than new recruits filled the depleted ranks as if rising 
from the ground. 

Rayon, threatened at Zacatecas by Calleja, sped 
away again to the south, fighting by the way and 
usually defeated, — at ''el Maguey," "la Tinaja," 
and Valladolid, which city he failed to capture. Pen- 
etrating still further into the mountains of Michoa- 
can, he took possession of Zitacuaro, and there, on 
August 19, i8i I, called a ''junta" of four men — him- 
self, Liceaga, Verduzco, and Yarza — which issued 
a proclamation and became a nucleus for the con- 
gress of Chilpancingo two years later. 

This reappearance of a governing center for the 
revolution was joyously welcomed by the warrior 
priest Don Jose Maria Morelos, whose daring and 
breathless activity had for nearly a year been carry- 
ing terror to the Spanish forces all through the south. 
A little dark-faced Indian, who had obtained his the- 
ological training after years of manual labor and 
poverty, partly under Hidalgo while the great pa- 
triot was rector of the Colegio de San Nicolas, Mo- 
relos, when his old teacher came back to Valladolid 
at the head of an army, was curate of a near-by vil- 
lage. When he hastened to join the revolutionary 
movement, which exactly suited his tastes, Hidalgo, 
instead of taking him along on his march toward the 
capital, sent him flying southward with orders to 
gather troops and, if posisble, take possession of 
Acapulco, a port on the Pacific coast. Sallying forth 
alone and without resources, the martial priest so 



Persistence of the Revolution. 77 

successfully carried out the orders of his superior as 
to enroll his name among the really great military 
leaders of the world. His exploits, if detailed, would 
make a romance as thrilling as any ever born in the 
imagination of genius. Without actually capturing 
Acapulco he kept it in a more or less constant state 
of siege, while at the same time systematically ter- 
rorizing the whole region south of Morelia to the 
coast. 

Morelos, having united his counsels with those of 
the junta, left Rayon secure, as he thought, in Zit- 
acuaro, a place of great natural strength, to await 
the attack of the royalist army under Calleja, while 
he, dividing his own forces, made vigorous dem- 
onstrations against Acapulco, Toluca, and Oaxaca, 
and even threatened Mexico City itself. But Calleja, 
whose savage conduct after his capture of Guana- 
juato had earned for him the title of ''the Cruel," 
easily routed Rayon, captured and devastated Zit- 
acuaro, and once more dissipated the rallying center 
of the Independents. 

But the fire of revolution, instead of being stamped 
out, was only scattered. It continued to burst into 
flames on every hand. For two years the warfare 
was scattering and guerilla-like, but often heroic. 
The siege of Cuautla, where Morelos resisted the 
whole vice-regal army for seventy days and then 
withdrew with all his troops, was an exploit worthy 
of any general and time. Not less so was the con- 
duct, on a critical occasion, of one of his subordi- 



78 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

nates, Don Nicolas Bravo. The government having 
captured the father of this officer, Don Leonardo 
Bravo, a brave and active patriot, Morelos offered in 
exchange for him eight hundred Spanish prisoners. 
The offer was refused. The prisoner was given 
choice between death and allegiance to Spain. 
Proudly refusing to take the oath, he was murdered 
by means of the degrading garrote. Whereupon 
Morelos, who was of iron temper, ordered Don Nico- 
las, son of the murdered man, to execute threq hun- 
dred Spanish prisoners in reprisal. The prisoners 
were paraded and the order of the commanding gen- 
eral read to them in the presence of the insurgent 
troops. "Now,'' said Bravo, 'T do not choose, even 
when ordered to do so, to imitate the wretched ex- 
ample of my enemies. I prefer a different kind of 
vengeance. I not only spare your lives, but you are 
free. Go." This "insurgent vengeance," as it was 
called, produced a profound impression. 

Two years after the Zitacuaro junta, Morelos, who 
had but lately captured both Oaxaca and Acapulco, 
secured the assembling in Chilpancingo (now the 
capital of the state of Guerrero) of a still more rep- 
resentative congress or council. This was in Sep- 
tember, 1813. The congress consisted of forty dele- 
gates, elected wherever the insurgents were in con- 
trol, and appointed by Morelos from other sections. 
Tt included the members of the previous junta, and 
besides them, Jose Maria Cos, Carlos Maria Busta- 
mante, Jose Maria Murguia, Jose Manuel de Her- 



I 



Congress of Chilpancingo. 79 

rera, and other famous patriots. As an example of 
the respect he wished paid to the body, Morelos 
promptly surrendered to it his military command, 
only to be at once elected by the congress captain 
general of all the insurgent forces. After something 
like a month of deliberation, the congress issued a 
manifesto consisting in part of a declaration of inde- 
pendence for Mexico and in part of a defense of the 
insurgent cause in the war then in progress. Among 
the curious and contradictory features of this docu- 
ment, which is chiefly interesting as an example of 
how liberal ideas grow, are its declaration that the 
war which the opponents of the Spanish government 
were then waging, was in favor of Ferdinand VIL, 
to whom they affirmed their loyalty, and its assertion 
that the insurgents were the true supporters of the 
Holy Catholic Church, and that if successful they 
would not admit into Mexico or tolerate there any 
other form of worship. It is to be remembered that in 
those years the Spanish government was in the hands 
of the Cortes, a liberal body instituted by the juntas, 
which had made sweeping reforms in the matter of 
religious toleration, abolished the Inquisition, and 
otherwise reversed the traditional policies of the 
Spanish monarchy. Several members of this first 
Mexican congress, and a number of the chief mili- 
tary leaders up to that time, were priests. These 
facts will in part explain the statement made earlier 
that the real secret of the success of the Mexican 



8o A New Era in Old Mexico. 

revolution was in the ultimate identification with 
it of a strong Catholic sentiment. 

But that which was even dearer to the Indians who 
composed the insurgent armies than their devotion 
to the mother Church was the dream of freedom. 
The Chilpancingo congress spoke out boldly con- 
cerning the right of Mexico to independence. Its 
members appealed in defense of their contention to 
the very recent uprising in Spain against the French 
intervention. Little by little, by the slow processes 
native to the manner of life of that day — all the slow- 
er among a people of contented temper and slight en- 
lightenment — the sentiment of freedom was making 
its way. 

Venegas had been substituted in the viceroyalty by 
Calleja, who represented to the common people the 
very essence of scorn and cruelty. They might not 
understand the intricate politics of Europe, where 
just then Napoleon's power was tottering to its fall; 
they certainly could not make out why good priests 
like Cos and Morelos were fighting for the Guadalu- 
pan Virgin, while the archbishop and the Inquisition 
in Mexico were launching anathemas against all who 
opposed the viceroy, but they could understand the 
thought of freeing themselves from the exactions 
and cruelties of men like Calleja. And this was to 
them a very sweet thought. Thus it came about that 
as fast as the insurrection was put down it broke out 
again. And even though its leaders sincerely wished 
to keep the movement loyal to the Catholic monarchy 



Death of Morelos. 8i 

of Spain, they had nevertheless set in motion forces 
which they could no longer control. 
' But Calleja, an able military leader, and now 
armed with all the prestige and resources of his po- 
sition, pressed the insurgents hard. Opportunely 
came the news that Napoleon had replaced Ferdi- 
nand on the throne of Spain, who in turn had rees- 
tablished the Inquisition, made tatters of the con- 
stitution devised by the Cortes, and inaugurated a 
truly Spanish regime. This was after Calleja's own 
heart. Overlooking completely, therefore, the loy- 
alty of the insurgents to the puppet king while he 
had been fawning about the feet of Napoleon, he 
availed himself of the king's abrogation of all con- 
stitutional guarantees and began to make cruel hav- 
oc of such rebels as fell into his hands. One of these, 
erelong, was Morelos, who, anxious to preserve the 
congress, which had meantime become a vacuous and 
useless company of figureheads, exposed himself to 
capture on a certain critical occasion in order that 
its members might escape. He was loaded with 
chains, carried to Mexico, condemned by the Inqui- 
sition, which Calleja had put again into operation, 
and, for fear of the effect on the people, secretly ex- 
ecuted in a village just outside the city, December 
22, 1815. This was probably the last auto-da-fe of 
the Inquisition, that baleful institution having for- 
ever disappeared within a short time thereafter. 

The insurgents were still numerous but scattered. 
An ambitious general, Mier y Teran, dissolved the 
6 



82 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

congress, and thus broke up the last nucleus of an 
administrative center. In 1816 Calleja gave place 
as viceroy to Don Ruiz de Apodaca, a reasonable 
and conciliatory man. Nothing in the succeeding 
year availed to draw together the disintegrated 
forces of the revolution, and the kindliness of Apo- 
daca, and especially his disposition to favor the Cre- 
oles and Mestizos, brought many of the disaffected 
to take again the oath of allegiance to Spain. 

A romantic episode of the otherwise quiet year of 
18 1 7 was the meteoric campaign of Don Francisco 
Javier Mina, a brilliant and bold young Spanish lib- 
eral of noble family, who, disgusted by the march 
of events in Spain, landed on the northeast coast of 
Mexico with a few companions, quite a number of 
them Americans, captured three hundred horses, and 
set out on a campaign in aid of the revolution so suc- 
cessful as to be fairly incredible. Reckless, watch- 
ful, fearless, indefatigable, he eluded or defeated 
every expedition sent in pursuit of him, and for half 
a year flashed like a meteor from mountain range to 
mountain range, from city to city, through all the 
central part of Mexico. Captured at last and shot, 
he left a name and a story which warm the heart 
and brighten the page of Mexico's historians to this 
day. 

For three years the flames of revolution only 
smoldered. Then again from Spain came a blast at 
which they burst once more into a far-flashing blaze. 
Ferdinand's foolish and childish absolutism had 



The Last Straw. 83 

proved too much for even patient Spain. Napoleon, 
his protector, had gone into eclipse. The people 
rose up and thrust the constitution of 18 12 into his 
very face. The Cortes assembled, and he made be- 
fore it a pusillanimous and hypocritical address, 
agreeing to all that the liberals demanded and pro- 
fessing sentiments he by no means felt. If Spain 
seethed with these movements, Mexico was worse. 
The last prop was at last knocked from beneath the 
loyalty of the aristocratic Church party. They were 
willing to support a Catholic government, but this 
new Spanish constitution, with an angry people be- 
hind it, struck at the dearest 'lights" of the Church 
and its priests. At last the leaders of the Church 
party in Mexico were ready to join hands with the 
common people and cut loose from Spain. They 
still clung to their pet, Ferdinand, and part of the 
new plan was to have him leave Spain, where he was 
so much abused, and come to set up a truly Catholic 
monarchy in Mexico. 

A tool was ready to their hand in Don Augustin 
Iturbide. An ardent Catholic and a soldier of con- 
siderable military experience, they managed to have 
him put in command of the next expedition against 
the insurgents. Don Vicente Guerrero, one of the 
undaunted patriots who had kept the field throughout 
all these years, gradually increasing his band of 
hardy troops, had made such rapid progress during 
1820 that in the latter part of that year he was even 
venturing to threaten the capital. Iturbide was sent 



84 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

against him with the flower of the royaHst army; 
but instead of fighting, he opened negotiations, and 
disclosed to the insurgent leader a "plan" which he 
and the aristocratic leaders in Mexico had concocted. 
It proposed the union of all the forces then favoring 
independence from Spain for the promotion of that 
cause and the protection especially of religion. ''Un- 
ion, independence, religion" were to be guaranteed, 
symbolized by the green, white, and red flag which 
had just been devised, and which still flies as Mexi- 
co's banner. Iturbide declared that the majority of 
the troops under him were ready to accept the plan 
and to fight if necessary for these ''tres garantias." 
The offer was joyously welcomed by the revolution- 
ists. Guerrero yielded the supreme command to 
Iturbide, the troops of the opposing armies and their 
leaders held a love feast, and the news went flying 
among scattered and despairing patriots from the 
Gulf to the Pacific Ocean. The viceroy cajoled, 
bribed, threatened, wheedled, but could do nothing, 
and in disgust resigned and went home to Spain. 
He was succeeded July 30, 1821, by Don Juan 
O'Donoju, sixty-fourth and last Spanish viceroy, 
who died within a few months, having virtually 
agreed to the proposals of the united revolutionists, 
and having never attained in Mexico to other than a 
nominal authority. 

So acute was the quarrel in Spain during those 
years, between king and people, and so debilitated 
the mother country with her internal disturbances, 



Independence at Last, 85 

that not much could be done by her to break the 
strength which now came to the cause of Mexican 
independence through the coaHtion between the Old 
Catholic and the Insurgent parties. So soon as the 
Spanish Cortes heard of O'Donoju's acquiescence in 
the revolutionary "plan," they repudiated it and de- 
nounced him as a traitor. But this served no pur- 
pose further than to register their protest. They 
had neither the men nor the money to enforce Spain's 
claims. 

Thus at the last, after so much of travail, almost 
without effort and absolutely without bloodshed, 
Mexico became independent. But fifteen years were 
yet to lapse before Spain, reluctant still, acknowl- 
edged that independence and forgave her wayward 
daughter. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Evolution of the Republic. 

The fifty years that followed Mexico's final rup- 
ture with Spain witnessed two abortive attempts 
to establish in New Spain the monarchical form of 
government. Both failed for the same reason : they 
were crushed by the weight of the sentiment in favor 
of popular government. The "Plan of the Three 
Guarantees/' usually spoken of as the "Plan de Igu- 
ala," from the name of the village where it was first 
publicly announced, provided for the calling of a 
constituent congress which was to devise a monarch- 
ical form of government over which a prince of the 
house of Bourbon should be invited to reign. Fer- 
dinand VIL, however, to whom this of¥er prima- 
rily referred, did not care to make the venture ; and 
besides, the Cortes had somewhat to say concerning 
the necessity of his remaining in Spain. No other 
Bourbon prince seems to have been available. The 
congress, of about one hundred members, met in 
February, 1822. The Spanish element supplied one 
of the three parties of which it was composed, but 
this party were much set back by the news of Spain's 
rude repudiation of the whole movement. A sort of 
pro tempore government had been set up in which 
Iturbide and others acted with O'Donoju, the de- 
posed viceroy, up to the time of his death. The two 
(S6) 



**Emperor" Iturbide. 87 

other parties were, first, the adherents of Iturbide, 
who had already conceived the idea of substituting 
him for the proposed Bourbon prince, and who called 
themselves *'Iturbidistas" ; and, secondly, the Repub- 
licans, who openly favored a popular government. 

Three months after this rather nondescript body 
began its deliberations, in May, 1822, the soldiers 
stationed in the city — whether at his instigation or 
not, is not known — "proclaimed" Iturbide emperor, 
and fairly stampeded the city. The congress found 
itself bullied out of countenance by popular clamor, 
and by a vote of seventy-seven to fifteen agreed to 
the demand of the soldiers and made the young Mez- 
tizo colonel "emperor." In March of the next year 
he abdicated the throne, and was forced to leave the 
country. The story of his "empire" is amusing and 
pathetic rather than tragic. He was an amiable and 
vain young man, really devoted to his country, but 
not of the stuff emperors are made of. Besides, the 
people were in no mood to trifle with the toys and 
gilded shows of a puppet royalty. They had serious 
business on hand and were serious men. The patriot 
Indian element and the wealthy and privileged class- 
es, hereditary foes at best, were already closing with 
each other in that death grip of a struggle, concern- 
ing the kind of a government the country was to 
have, which did not cease for fifty years. The con- 
gress had succeeded in placing a loan or two at most 
disadvantageous rates, one in England and one in 
France, destined later in the century to become the 



88 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

storm center of foreign intervention. This money- 
was, however, rapidly dissipated. After the abdica- 
tion of the emperor, the supreme power was placed 
temporarily in the hands of a governing board of 
three. Congress banished and pensioned Iturbide, 
and adjourned. 

In November, 1823, another congress was sum- 
moned, and the work of formulating a constitution 
seriously undertaken. About the same time Presi- 
dent Monroe announced his famous doctrine warn- 
ing European governments that they were not to in- 
terfere in American affairs. This no doubt contrib- 
uted not a little to the cause of Mexican independ- 
ence, since Spain, at the instigation of the Holy Al- 
liance, was at the time seriously considering the re- 
conquest of her American colonies. This congress 
was divided into the ''Federalist" and the "Central- 
ist" parties, names which of themselves do not signi- 
fy a great deal, since the Centralists corresponded 
to the Federalists in the early history of our own 
country, and the Federalists were Republicans. It 
was the old cleavage between the native and the 
Spaniard, the poor and the rich, the progressive and 
the conservative. It has not disappeared from Mex- 
ico to this day. 

All winter they debated the constitution, the Re- 
publicans holding up the example of the United 
States as an ideal, and their opponents showing only 
too truly the many and grave differences between the 
situation in Mexico and that in the American colo- 



The Constitution of 1824. 89 

nies forty years before. In January a tentative basis, 
consisting of twenty-six articles, was adopted, and 
by October of the same year, 1824, the constitution 
itself was framed, adopted, and proclaimed. The 
Federalists had triumphed at most points, and the 
document was modeled in large measure upon the 
constitution of the United States. The provisional 
agreement had declared that the government was to 
be "popular, representative, federal, and republican." 
But the Centralist party was able, backed by the in- 
ertia of a situation in which nobody really knew 
what to do, to force the insertion of two provisions 
which were to be fruitful of mischief. One declared 
the Catholic religion to be official, and that no other 
would be tolerated; the other perpetuated the reli- 
gious and military fueros. This word describes an 
inheritance from the dark days of the Middle Ages 
when warrior and priest were masters of the world. 
The fueros were the vested right of soldiers and 
churchmen to be tried by courts instituted by their 
own orders instead of by the law of the land. It was 
a much-coveted distinction, to which both orders 
clung long and desperately, though its inconsistency 
with popular government does not need to be pointed 
out. The constitution of 1824, though virtually nev- 
er in full force, served nevertheless, twenty-three 
years later, as an excellent basis for that of 1857. 

The newly constituted republic consisted of nine- 
teen states and five territories. The constitution pro- 
vided that the president should be elected by the vote 



go A New Era in Old Mexico. 

of the state legislatures and for a term of four years. 
Don Felix Fernandez, who had recently adopted 
the rather boastful name of Guadalupe Victoria, de- 
scribing his devotion to the Virgin and his prowess 
in war, was the candidate of the Federalists, against 
Don Nicolas Bravo, put forward by the Centralists. 
Victoria was elected and Bravo became vice presi- 
dent. Thus at last Mexico was free, with a duly 
constituted civil government. The conflict between 
the opposing parties went on. Private ambitions 
and jealousies among the leaders resulted in great 
bitterness of feeling, and the recently introduced or- 
der of Masonry added fuel to the flames. The first 
lodges formed were of the Scottish Rite, brought 
from France, and were identified with the wealthy 
Spaniards and the Church party. Presently, how- 
ever, an accredited minister of the United States 
brought authority to establish a York Rite jurisdic- 
tion, which he did in connection with the strict Re- 
publican or patriot party. When secret, oath-bound 
societies meddle in politics, disaster usually results. 
*'Escoceses" and "Yorkinos" long survived in Mex- 
ico as rallying cries, the symbols of much bitter feel- 
ing. 

Victoria w^as the only president who served out a 
constitutional term under the instrument of 1824, 
and his wound up in a bloody wrangle. Nicolas Bra- 
vo, Vicente Guerrero, Guadalupe Victoria, Anto- 
nio Lopez de Santa Anna — names all of them made 
notable by the part their bearers had taken in freeing 



War -with the United States. 91 

the country from Spain — together with other able 
and ambitious miHtary leaders, now began that pet- 
ty struggle among themselves which was to keep the 
country in a turmoil for nearly fifty years. It is an 
intricate and tedious story, and depressing withal. 
The most prominent figure in it for many years was 
Santa Anna, a man of considerable military ability, 
but so despotic in his temper as to be absolutely un- 
fit for any position of civil authority. His only con- 
ception of a government for his country was a dic- 
tatorship, with himself as dictator. Once or twice 
even when he had tired of governing — for which, in- 
deed, he had no real taste — and retired to the privacy 
of his country estates, he seemed to think it perfectly 
proper any day the whim seized him to assume again 
the reins of absolute power. 

It was during this period of virtual anarchy that 
the unfortunate but unavoidable war with the United 
States occurred. The citizens of the Mexican state 
of Texas, who were largely Anglo-Saxons, weary of 
the irregular and unsatisfactory mode of govern- 
ment, and desiring closer affiliation with their rela- 
tives in the United States, asserted their independ- 
ence in a glorious war for liberty. By the time they 
were ready to apply for admission into the Union, 
Mexico, realizing what she had lost, made a fierce 
effort to stop the movement, only to lose before the 
war was over far more of territory than that origi- 
nally involved. 

Ten years after the war with the United States, 



92 A Ne^v Era in Old Mexico. 

the patriot party at last began to take those decisive 
steps so long needed. Partly impelled by the poverty 
of the government and partly because of dear-bought 
insight into the real cause of the persisting vitality 
of the reactionary party as against free and represent- 
ative government, Gomez Farias, Miguel Lerdo de 
Tejada, Benito Juarez, Melchor Ocampo, Guillermo 
Prieto, and their immortal companions in the final 
desperate struggle for liberty, laid hands on the treas- 
ures and vested rights of the Church. In 1855, while 
Juarez was for a time in the cabinet of President 
Alvarez, as Minister of Justice, he formulated the 
first of the "reform laws" annulling \\\^ fueros and 
declaring all citizens equal before the law. A year 
later followed the fiscal decree of Miguel Lerdo de 
Tejada, Secretary of the Treasury, nationalizing all 
mortmain property — that is, property acquired by 
people then dead in such a way that it could never 
be alienated. Most of it was held by the several re- 
ligious orders. The Jesuits and Franciscans resisted, 
and were promptly expelled from the country and 
their vast properties seized. These things, of course, 
consolidated the Church party against this new 
movement toward republican government. 

Suspecting that their constitution was radically 
defective, and seeing that it had long been disregard- 
ed, the patriot party decided to formulate a new one. 
This was done in the autumn of 1856, and it was 
adopted February 5, 1857. Tt embodied the princi- 
ples as to the rights of man promulgated by the 



The Republic at Last. 93 

French revolutionists, and was based, as to civil in- 
stitutions, largely upon the constitution of the United 
States. The fierce denunciation of the reform laws 
by the Archbishop of Mexico, and the unalterable 
hostility of all the leaders of the Catholic party to 
the abolition of the fueros, to the confiscation of 
Church property, the banishment of the monks, 
and the freedom of worship, convinced Juarez and 
his associates that they were going to have to fight 
the Church party in any case, and they decided that 
they might as well make a clean sweep of it. This 
they did. But within a year Mexico was plunged 
into a bloody civil war, which continued for ten 
years and included as one of its tragic episodes the 
uncalled-for intervention of the French emperor and 
the brief and fatal reign of Maximilian. But nei- 
ther the foreign invader nor the retrogade party at 
home could quench the undying devotion of the Mex- 
ican people to the ideal of a free and popular gov- 
ernment. Out of the smoke and dust of civil war, 
triumphant on the ruins of the enforced empire, 
emerged the republic. 



CHAPTER X. 

Catholicism and Revolutions — Imperium in 

Imperio. 

Having hastened though our outUne of the shift- 
ing politics of Mexico during the middle decades of 
the nineteenth century, we shall find it instructive to 
go again over the same period, making a more inti- 
mate study of some of the intellectual movements of 
which these kaleidoscopic political changes were the 
outward expression. The rapidly succeeding revolu- 
tions which marked the early history of independent 
Mexico, and which unfortunately still characterize 
the effort at self-government of other Spanish Amer- 
ican countries, are not due, as some would have us 
suppose, to the "natural incapacity for self-govern- 
ment of the Spanish-American peoples," nor wholly 
to the unregulated ambitions of their military lead- 
ers. These are, no doubt, contributory causes, but 
they themselves have their origin in, and obtain their 
potency for harm from, the same great underlying 
cause, namely, the hostility of the Catholic Church 
to popular government. This hostility is a legacy of 
the Church from its golden age, and though it may 
be on occasion veiled, and is often flatly denied, 
it exists nevertheless, showing itself in just that de- 
gree which the temper of any people or govern- 
ment will permit. The traditions of the Cath- 
(94) 



Obstacles to Self-Government. 95 

olic hierarchy are autocratic. Unquestioning obe- 
dience is with it a fundamental tenet. If, there- 
fore, a people who for three hundred years have been 
carefully trained by that hierarchy not to think for 
themselves, and taught that virtue is wholly in obe- 
dience and subserviency and not at all in boldness 
or initiative, displays afterwards as a consequence 
of that training some degree of unreadiness for the 
responsibilities of self-government, is it not invidious 
to call such a state ''natural incompetency"? It may 
be incompetency, but it is not natural ; it is acquired. 
The nation so situated deserves sympathetic good 
will from those who were better trained, not con- 
tumely. 

In the same way, the mischievous potency of the 
unrestrained ambitions of leaders, — ambitions which 
have so often plunged Mexico and other Spanish- 
American states into war, — is to be traced directly 
to the readiness of the Church party to develop and 
avail themselves of these ambitions. The priests 
and their associates do not exactly create them, to 
be sure. But after a few experiences, the common 
soldier is not ready to follow every new hero who 
springs up with a patriotic pronunciamiento against 
the existing government simply for glory. He 
had rather stay at home and plow his field or 
wield his saw and hammer. What will tempt him 
to fight? Money; nothing else, especially when the 
issues as to patriotism are so nicely balanced that 
only an expert could decide on which side duty lies. 



96 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

That it was the money of the Church which fitted out 
the expeditions that made havoc of the Hberal gov- 
ernment in Mexico so often as that government be- 
gan to settle down to business, will be perfectly evi- 
dent to any one who cares to go into the details of 
the country's history. Mexico stopped this inter- 
meddling at last. This she accomplished by the ef- 
fective measure of removing at one stroke the wealth 
which had been the source of the Church's power. 
Since that time the country has had peace. Other 
struggling republics may have to profit by her exam- 
ple. 

There was never a time in the history of any of 
the colonies of Spain when the leaders of the Church 
were willing to let the government alone. Often, it 
is true, they interfered to the advantage of the peo- 
ple. Archbishops, bishops, vicar generals, abbots, 
and even friars and priests, often made the lot of the 
representatives of the Spanish crown an unhappy 
one. Their power over the people was so absolute, 
and their following so blindly devoted to them, that 
in a crisis they could count on the support of prac- 
tically the whole population. The viceroys and cap- 
tains general did not, it is true, take much account 
of the people ; yet nobody cared to govern a province 
and be at the same time the best hated man in it. 

Almost as soon as the independence of Mexico had 
been secured, the conservative or monarchical party 
regretted it. They had counted surely on securing 
Ferdinand VIT. to be king of New Spain, and even 



Source of the Church's PoTver. 97 

Emperor Iturbide, fervent Catholic that he was, 
did not satisfy them. His "empire" fell still far- 
ther short of pleasing the hardy patriots who had 
supposed that independence and liberty were synony- 
mous, and who had little mind to see all their sac- 
rifices and bloodshed result merely in the substitution 
of one autocrat for another. This grim and patient- 
ly persistent fidelity to the republican ideal has been 
a feature of Mexico's history from that day onward. 
The distaste for popular government on the part of 
the Catholic leaders has been no more deep-seated 
than has been loyalty to freedom among the masses 
of the Mexican people. So ineradicable has been this 
loyalty on the one hand, and so incapable has the 
conservative party shown itself on the other, of free- 
ing the governments set up by its representatives 
from the practices and attitude of an odious tyranny, 
that for almost a century, while the resources of the 
two parties were more or less evenly balanced, it 
seemed impossible for either to manage public af- 
fairs in a way satisfactory to the other. 

The balance of power in the hands of the Church 
party was soon found to be due to its immense wealth 
and its compact organization. It had always been a 
sort of imperium in imperio. Its authority was ex- 
ercised quite independently of that of the state. Sep- 
arate and special tribunals for its officials, with 
awards of penalties and immunities in which the 
state dared not interfere, and a complete financial 
system with an immense revenue and a manner of 
7 



gS A New Era in Old Mexico. 

accounting independent of all outside observation, 
placed the Church in a position to dictate terms to any 
government which might affect to disregard its wish- 
es. Arrayed against this venerable and powerful 
ecclesiastical machinery, with its spiritual sanctions 
and its awards and punishments not confined to earth 
but reaching also within the veil, were first, the pro- 
gressive and intelligent patriots who, having studied 
the science of government and the needs of their 
country, had espoused with unfaltering devotion the 
cause of religious and political liberty. With them 
were, secondly, the native instincts of the great mass 
of native Mexicans, confused in their minds, it is 
true, by the opposition to their course of the vener- 
ated Church and its priesthood, yet loving liberty 
with all the ardor of their untutored nature, smart- 
ing under numerous and long-inflicted tyrannies, 
and blindly devoted to their beautiful native land 
which, despite the long-continued occupancy of the 
foreigner, they instinctively believed to be theirs by 
right. The Creoles and Mestizos fluctuated, now 
joining themselves with great enthusiasm to the pa- 
triot party, and again, unable to grasp the ultimate 
purpose of its leaders, or by reason of some step on 
their part peculiarly offensive to the clergy, rallying 
to the priests not less heartily, always subject to the 
seductive persuasion of good wages and loot. 

With such constituent elements, the revolutions 
in Mexican government are seen to have been both 
intelligible and inevitable. Following this clew, some 



J 



Revolutions Explained. 99 

sort of sequence may be traced in that weary suc- 
cession of disturbances which long vexed that coun- 
try and which still puzzles students of Central and 
South American politics. For though the pope has 
kind things to say about strong republics, like France 
and the United States, in all countries where repub- 
licanism is still weak and struggling the Church will 
be found arrayed against it. If a Santa Anna be put 
forward by the conservatives as their choice for 
president, it will very soon be found that it is be- 
cause his ideal of government is the same as theirs, 
and that once he is elected, instead of abiding by 
the constitution he has proclaimed himself dictator. 
This fashion of changing a constitutional presidency 
into a military dictatorship, to meet emergencies, is 
one which, unfortunately, commends itself to men of 
ambitious temper, even though they have been put 
forward by the patriot party. It has thus come to 
pass in such countries as Venezuela and Colombia 
that tyranny on the part of the man in power is the 
rule, whether he be a liberal or a conservative. 

Nevertheless the Catholic party must bear the 
odium of having set the baleful example, and of hav- 
ing reduced the people to such a state, through its 
management of their spiritual and intellectual af- 
fairs, that they are really not able to carry the bur- 
den of a representative government. It is something 
of a puzzle to make out why, at least in the realm of 
practical politics, the Catholic hierarchy should pre- 
fer the autocratic to the democratic form of govern- 

L. fFC. 



100 A Ne'sv £ra in Old Mexico. 

ment. In no other countries in the world is that 
Church so truly prosperous as in the United States, 
England, and France. Where its people have been 
raised by popular education to an intellectual level 
such that public sentiment forbids and even makes 
impossible that immorality and indolence of the 
priesthood and those idolatrous superstitions on the 
part of the people which are the disgrace and the 
burden of Catholicism in purely Catholic countries, 
that Church takes its place with others in a sphere of 
respectability and Christian activity such as at once 
to win the esteem of the outside world and to increase 
the vitality and promise of the Church itself. And, 
in particular, a government like that of the United 
States, which avowedly eschews all intermeddling 
in ecclesiastical affairs, offers a field for the devel- 
opment of the Church far preferable to that under 
some autocratic ruler whose assertion of his divine 
right to rule in all things constantly brings him into 
collision with pope and bishop. Such a statement ap- 
pears axiomatic, yet, strange to say, in France, in 
Spain, in Austria, in Mexico, in South America, — 
everywhere, indeed, where it has been able to wield 
its influence, — the Catholic Church has stoutly set 
itself against religious freedom, even against any- 
thing bearing the semblance of political freedom. 

The explanation of this contradictory and ulti- 
mately futile attitude must be sought mainly, as 
would appear, in two considerations. First, in the af- 
finity which an autocratic hierarchical system natu- 



The Enemy of Enlightenment. loi 

rally feels for a political autocracy. All the wrang- 
lings between emperor and pope, king and bishop, 
viceroy and vicar general, which have filled the 
world wnth their din for a thousand years, have 
not sufficed to eliminate the natural affinity exist- 
ing between civil and ecclesiastical autocrats. Rome 
still believes tyranny to be the ideal government. 

Not less powerful is the second consideration, 
which is the fear that the enlightenment that comes 
with a liberal and popular government will cause the 
people to grow out from under the power of the 
priests. A traveler in the West Indies who fell 
sick of a tropical fever there says that during his 
convalescence his black nurse constantly admon- 
ished him, Ne pense pas, ne pense pas! That is 
the ideal of the papal system in dealing with men: 
"Do not think, do not think!" The priest will 
do all the thinking and the praying; he will read 
the Bible, solve the problems of life, open the gate 
of heaven, bear the whole responsibility of salvation. 
A liberal government must set up schools, must open 
avenues of commerce with the world, must bring 
its people up to the level of competition with other 
modern peoples. From the point of view of Catholi- 
cism, all this is anathema. That Church opposes the 
public school everywhere. In Mexico it fought the 
railways and the factories and the telegraph as so 
many devices of the evil one. Thus it came about 
that the hostility between the thoughtful patriots 
and the Catholic party there waxed hotter and hot- 



102 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

ter as it became increasingly evident that if either 
triumphed it would be by the defeat and the elimi- 
nation of the other. After nearly fifty years of the 
constant setting up and bowling over of constitu- 
tional governments, the liberals at last in despera- 
tion took a step so radical that it brought on the 
final, bloody, exciting, and decisive struggle. That 
drastic measure and its consequences, dramatic, trag- 
ic, vastly significant, must occupy us in another 
chapter. 



CHAPTER XI. 
The Reform Laws and the Constitution of 

1857. 

Though the phrase in the chapter preceding this 
which describes the final desperate measure of the 
Hberal party as a single step is in a sense correct, 
it is true, nevertheless, that there were several dis- 
tinct elements in this decisive movement. It had 
one purpose, to break the power of the Catholic 
party. It proceeded to accomplish this in two ways 
— first, by attacking the Church's exclusive prerog- 
atives and compact organization ; and second, by re- 
moving its wealth. Both these were destructive 
measures. They excited much bitterness at the time, 
and even yet many writers are unable to describe 
them without using the language of harsh disap- 
proval. It is to be admitted, too, that the construc- 
tive work has not yet been completed, though the 
history of Mexico for the last forty years shows that 
it has been ably begun. 

The two measures — that is, the abolition of the 
fueros, those civil and judicial prerogatives of the 
ecclesiastics and the soldiers, the doing away, in 
brief, of privileged classes; and the sequestration 
or nationalizing of ecclesiastical property and the 
breaking up of religious orders — were both, at least 
by implication, embodied in the new constitution, 

(103) 



104 ^ Ne^v £ra in Old Mexico. 

adopted February 5, 1857, ^^^ promulgated a week 
later. Both had, however, taken form earlier and, 
with certain other enactments, gone before the coun- 
try under the general name of Lcyes de Reforma, or 
reform laws. The assertion of the principles in- 
volved in them, to wit, that no classes should have 
special rights before the law and that overgrown 
monopolies should not be allowed to congest in their 
coffers money needed for the public welfare, may 
be traced respectively to Benito Juarez and to Val- 
entin Gomez Farias. 

Juarez was a jurist by temper and training. Dur- 
ing a term as governor of his native state of Oaxaca 
he had formulated a code of laws for that state — the 
first Mexican code, it is believed, ever proclaimed. 
A little later, banished by the overweening jealousy 
of Santa Anna, then dictator, he was forced to spend 
more than a year in the United States. This time he 
employed (at New Orleans) in a careful study of 
the laws and principles underlying our free institu- 
tions; so that when he was, after a few years (in 
1855), appointed chief justice, under President Al- 
varez, he promptly formulated a law for the bet- 
ter '"administration of justice." This law struck a 
deathblow at the fucros, under which, ever since the 
Middle Ages, ecclesiastics and soldiers had enjoyed 
the privilege of trial for crime by special courts of 
their own order. How grave and far-reaching an 
encroachment on popular liberty such special priv- 
ileges are can scarcely be conceived by those who 




BENITO JUAREZ. 



The Fueros. 105 

have never known anything but strict equaHty before 
the law. The ecclesiastical courts, especially, were 
even more of a farce than the courts-martial, and the 
exemption of members of religious orders from any 
adequate punishment for crimes, to say nothing of 
misdemeanors, was a source of constant and acute 
exasperation to the common people. These fueros 
were one of the worst of many evil fruits borne by 
the Catholic doctrine of the special sacredness of the 
priesthood. 

Priests, friars, and soldiers banded together in a 
furious resistance against the attack on their pre- 
cious prerogatives. But, though the conflict was 
long and sanguinary, the law stood. It was not 
merely the sturdy "little Indian" who was w^arring 
against these hoar anachronisms. The tide of en- 
lightened modern sentiment, the on-coming ava- 
lanche of the Rights of Man, bore down upon these 
crumbling monuments of feudal days and crushed 
and buried them forever. 

The other measure, equally vital to the republic 
and equally odious — perhaps even more hateful — to 
the Church, the nationalizing of Church property, 
was not devised out of hand like the abolition of the 
fueros. As far back as 1833, Gomez Farias, one of 
the ablest financiers Mexico ever produced, suggest- 
ed as a possible mode of meeting the financial crisis 
to which the defenders of the government had come, 
the sequestration of some of the vast holdings of the 
Church. The Church, he said, gets the full benefit 



io6 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

of the government's protection, yet, though she is 
rich while all others are poor, she contributes noth- 
ing to the government's aid. Again in the emer- 
gency of the war with the United States he made a 
like suggestion. The Church authorities, instead of 
meeting these intimations with a voluntary offering, 
listened to them with cold disdain. After a sharp 
debate in congress, however, this second effort of the 
great financier took the form, in 1848, of a forced 
loan from the Church to help meet the expenses of 
the war that had just closed. 

By this time Gomez Farias was beginning to feel 
the burden of age. In Benito Juarez, Melchor 
Ocampo, Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, and other ardent 
young patriots, he had found, however, faithful dis- 
ciples. These took up the conflict where he left off. 
The straits of the Church party brought Santa An- 
na, temporarily disgraced by his failures in the cam- 
paigns against the Americans, back to power again. 
With the singular fatuity which ever afflicted him 
when dealing with civil government, he promptly 
proclaimed himself not president, but dictator. This 
was in 1853, He compromised with the leaders of 
the Church party as to this forced loan, and thus so- 
hdified them in his support. But the very name of 
dictator Avas hateful to the majority of the people, 
and in a short time the patriotic element rallied once 
more in such force that Santa Anna was driven again 
into exile, and Juan Alvarez, an old but patriotic gen- 
eral, placed in the presidential chair. It was as min- 



Nationalizing Church Property. 107 

ister of justice under him that Juarez brought out 
his reform law for the administration of justice. 

Alvarez gave way in the autumn of 185^ to Igna- y 
cio Comonfort, who was at the time supposed to be a ' 
stanch liberal, and as such had been elected presi- 
dent. He appointed Lerdo de Tejada his secretary 
of the treasury, and within a very short time this dis- 
ciple of Gomez Farias brought to the cabinet his proj- 
ect for the confiscation and sale of mortmain proper- 
ties. This law was in imitation of similar enact- 
ments on the part of nearly all European govern- 
ments. In Mexico, as elsewhere, it lay almost wholly 
against the Catholic Church and its several religious 
orders. These were virtually the only holders of 
property that could rightly be classified as mortmain. 
The law was approved by the cabinet of Comonfort 
and passed by the liberal congress. But Comonfort 
himself, whether bribed thereto, or because of natural 
timidity, began to waver in his assertion of liberal 
principles. The Church party, already aroused by 
the abolishment of the special ecclesiastical courts un- 
der the law of Juarez, were driven to even fiercer re- 
sentment by this attack on their property. 

Meanwhile, during the same year, 1856, the con- 
stituent convention or congress was laboriously ham- 
mering out a new constitution. Its members freely 
admitted that this was to be cast largely upon the 
basis of the constitution of the United States of 
America. That involved precisely most of the 
principles underlying the reform laws that had just 



io8 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

been promulgated, though they had not yet been car- 
ried into effect. In spite of the half-hearted backing 
of the president, the document, when finished, in 
1857, was adopted by an almost unanimous vote of 
the body that had framed it. The aged Gomez Fa- 
rias, amid the reverent applause of the whole assem- 
bly, tottered forward on the arms of his sons to affix 
his signature to this instrument, the fruition of his 
fondest hopes during a long and strenuous life. The 
principle of equal rights before the law was, as a mat- 
ter of course, included as fundamental in the consti- 
tution. The loss of the Church's special prerogatives 
and of the right of its priesthood to support by tax- 
ation was also implied in that instrument, which 
made no mention of a state Church and declared 
that worship should be free (Art. 9). The entering 
wedge on the subject of property was in the form of 
a brief statement (Art. 2j^ that no corporation, civil 
or ecclesiastical, should hold real estate, except such 
as is strictly necessary for its own purposes. The 
instrument is altogether an admirable one, a monu- 
ment to the men who formulated it. 

Upon the proclamation of the constitution the 
gathering storm of opposition broke. Comonfort 
was not a sufficiently resolute man to face the con- 
flict which all saw was inevitable, and was torn with 
conflicting emotions by the distress of his mother, an 
ardent Catholic, to whom he was deeply devoted. 
The champions of freedom had at last laid hands 
upon those time-honored abuses which had hitherto 



Benito Juarez President. 109 

thwarted all their efforts, and proposed to sweep 
them out of existence. The wealth and intelligence 
and close organization of the ecclesiastical opposi- 
tion party, backed by the blind devotion of the great 
host of adherents of the Church, made a most formid- 
able combination. Comonfort, weakly yielding for a 
time, enough to throw the control of affairs at the 
capital of the republic and most of the machinery of 
the federal government into the hands of the conserv- 
atives, at last found his position between his own 
cabinet and the enemies of the constitution so uncom- 
fortable that he slipped out of the country and was 
lost to the struggle. This brought Juarez, president 
of the supreme court, into the presidential chair 
about the beginning of 1855. Juarez had long held, 
with Gomez Farias, ideas concerning the property 
and power of the Catholic Church more radical than 
any that had, up to that time, been embodied in the 
legislation. Seeing that the issue was at last joined 
and that nothing but drastic measures could sustain 
the liberal cause, one of his first acts was to proclaim 
on the authority of himself and his cabinet — congress 
not being at the time in session — a law "nationaliz- 
ing," that is, confiscating to the uses of the govern- 
ment, all the productive properties of the Catholic 
Church. This was in strict conformity with the ar- 
ticle of the constitution that no corporation should 
hold any more property than it needed for its spe- 
cific purposes. It added to the mortmain holdings 
which had been sequestered under the law of Lerdo 



no A New Era in Old Mexico. 

all the productive real estate and the immense in- 
come from mortgages on real estate which made the 
Catholic Church at that time the possessor, as has 
been estimated, of at least one-third the total wealth 
of the country. A little later, during the stress of the 
war which immediately broke out, these enactments 
were enlarged and confirmed. They were gathered 
up and incorporated in a constitutional law a good 
many years later, known as the Lerdo law of 1874. It 
was promulgated during the presidency of Lerdo 
de Tejada, — not Don Miguel, the minister of Co- 
monfort in 1856, but his younger brother, Don Se- 
bastian, who was president from 1873 to 1876. In 
this final form, modified slightly in 1901, the con- 
stitutional law now stands. It allows no Church to 
hold real estate, unless that real estate is directly 
and immediately utilized for the purposes of the 
Church. 

The abolition of the religious orders was a measure 
closely involved with this same church property ques- 
tion. It began in 1857, when, shortly after the pro- 
mulgation of the constitution, while Comonfort still 
showed some little energy in its enforcement, a rev- 
olution broke out against his government under the 
lead of the ecclesiastical authorities in Puebla. The 
president in person led the army of the federal gov- 
ernment for the suppression of this revolt. The cam- 
paign was brief but bloody and decisive, resulting in 
a complete victory for the government. Since the 
uprising had been excited by the bishop of Puebla 



The Franciscans Banished. iii 

and his associates in the Church, the victorious pres- 
ident promptly confiscated and sold enough of the 
Church property in that state to pay the expense of 
the campaign. Returning to Mexico, it was reported 
to him that members of the order of Franciscans, 
who had a huge and wealthy monastery in the very 
heart of the city, had been plotting against the gov- 
ernment. Suspicious already and not in a mood to 
be very tolerant of such things, Comonfort promptly 
issued a decree banishing the entire order and confis- 
cating their property. Through the monastery itself 
he opened a wide street, which is still called Inde- 
pendence Street. The large chapel which belonged 
to the establishment remained for a good many years 
in the hands of the government, and was then bought 
by a representative of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church for the use of that Church. It was later, 
through some mismanagement, thrown on the mar- 
ket, and wealthy Catholics not long since bought 
back the old church and opened it again for Catho- 
lic worship. 

During the conflict which began in 1858, and did 
not really terminate till 1867, Juarez found himself 
under the necessity of abolishing all the remaining 
religious orders. The Jesuits had already fallen into 
ill repute and been banished from a number of Eu- 
ropean countries. Their organization was so com- 
pact, and their general officers so ambitious, that 
they had been during their century of existence not 
unfrequently in collision with the pope and the Ro- 



zia A New Era in Old Mexico, 

man Catholic Church itself. The Franciscans and 
the Augustinians had been extremely active as mis- 
sionaries in the early history of Mexico. Their 
friars had had much to do with conciliating and 
controlling the native population. As an outcome 
of their success, and in the same way as has been 
exhibited in almost every other country where they 
have had a hold, they had accumulated vast wealth. 
These accumulations, reacting upon the orders them- 
selves, had served to corrupt them and cause their 
degeneration. When the question finally arose as to 
whether they should be allowed to retain this wealth, 
they were joined as one man against the liberal gov- 
ernment. Seeing the power for evil of their close 
organization and unanimity, President Juarez, 
whose only aim was the establishment of a popular 
government, cost what it might, cut this Gordian 
knot by prohibiting religious associations altogether. 
That is to say, men and women under vows may live 
in Mexico, but may not live together in the same 
house. This radical attack upon a social and reli- 
gious system which had existed not merely unchal- 
lenged, but even approved by government and peo- 
ple, for more than three hundred years, is an exam- 
ple of the methods of this Indian patriot. Now that 
peace has long reigned and the need of such legisla- 
tion is not so apparent, the law itself is no longer 
strictly enforced. It is an open secret that many of 
the ''colleges" and ''seminaries" scattered through 
Mexico to-day are convents of nuns and Jesuits. 



1 



CHAPTER XII. 
The French Intervention. (I.) 

The French intervention, involving the unhappy 
reign and death in Mexico of Maximihan of Austria, 
was but an incident in the great struggle there be- 
tween conservatives and liberals. It is true that it 
was a dream of the Third Napoleon, who was in fact 
much abler as a dreamer than as a ruler. It is also 
true that it was the realization of a cherished plan 
of his Spanish wife, an ardent Catholic and a devout 
believer in the theory that the only right government 
for any people is a Catholic monarchy. Louis Na- 
poleon wished to see Mexico a kingdom subservient 
to the world-wide French empire, which he, like his 
great predecessor, thought himself raised up to 
found. Eugenie, his wife, wished to see Mexico 
brought again into the class of devout monarchies 
ruled by devout ecclesiastics, subservient to the 
Church in Spain and Rome. But neither of these 
dreamers would have dared to take open measures to 
carry out such plans had not the Church party in 
Mexico itself held out treasonable hands to them. 

Just as the enthusiasm for a liberal government 
under popular and representative forms had persisted 
in the minds of the patriotic and liberty-loving ele- 
ment in Mexico's population during the whole period 
since the days of Hidalgo, so during all those fifty 
8 (113) 



114 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

years the Catholic party in that country had with 
equal stubbornness held to its original purpose of 
making the country a truly faithful kingdom under 
a believing and properly approved monarch. There 
had scarcely been a day during all those years when 
some representative of the highest ecclesiastical au- 
thorities in Mexico was not diplomatically feeling 
about in Europe for a man who might become king 
of Mexico. The thing may seem absurd to the read- 
er of these lines, and, indeed, in view of all the de- 
velopments on this side of the Atlantic during the 
past hundred years, it is absurd ; yet it did not so ap- 
pear to these conservatives. Their instincts were 
wholly aristocratic. They had no faith in the peo- 
2le, and believed democracy to be essentially hostile 
to religion, if not atheistic. The archbishops and 
bishops who constantly bestirred themselves concern- 
ing this matter were but following therein the illus- 
trious example of their predecessors, who, through 
all the history of New Spain as a Spanish province, 
had constantly kept its viceroys in hot water by their 
interference in civil affairs. The Roman Catholic 
Church has never had any mind to accept a separation 
between Church and State. 

There can be no sort of question that Maximilian 
was only persuaded to undertake the precarious ven- 
ture of establishing an empire in Mexico when con- 
vinced that the real leaders among the Mexicans 
themselves desired it. An ingenuous and open-mind- 
ed young man, while a narrow Catholic he was in no 



Maximilian Persuaded. 115 

sense a tyrant in his temper, and had not the sHghtest 
disposition to embark upon the enterprise of govern- 
ing a people entirely unrelated to himself, unless it 
was in answer to a demand of the people themselves. 
It will be sufficient to touch briefly here upon the 
manner in which Napoleon shrewdly inveigled En- 
gland and Spain into a seeming support of his en- 
terprise of interference. While he was secretly per- 
suading Maximilian to accept the venture, and ar- 
ranging with the Catholic party in Mexico to present 
the invitation to him in such a way as to make the 
impression that it was the unanimous wish of the 
whole Mexican people, he was arranging with En- 
gland and Spain to make a demonstration against 
Mexico ostensibly for the purpose of securing the 
payment of her obligations. 

There were some bonded debts held in these sev- 
eral countries that had been drawing interest for a 
good many years. When the collision first began 
between Juarez and the Church party in 1858, the 
conservatives, by the carelessness or treason of Co- 
monfort, — historians are not agreed as to which it 
was, — held the capital city and controlled the princi- 
pal resources of the country. Juarez was barely able 
to assemble and provision the troops that were need- 
ed to protect the threatened constitution and the tot- 
tering republic. In an unguarded moment, and to 
meet the emergency of a dark hour, he issued, in 
1859, a proclamation suspending temporarily the 
payment of interest on these foreign obligations. 



ii6 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

The men who held the bonds in France and England 
and Spain raised a great outcry. The English gov- 
ernment, prompt as it always is to defend the inter- 
ests of its citizens, began measures for the dispatch- 
ing of an armed demonstration in order to convince 
the government of Mexico that it must pay its debts. 
At this juncture Napoleon interposed, suggesting 
that France, Spain, and England make common 
cause, but concealing from both Spain and England 
his real purpose. 

The plan was agreed upon. The three govern- 
ments sent their war vessels to the coast of Mexico, 
and France took occasion to dispatch along with 
them transports carrying a small army. Representa- 
tives of the government of Juarez explained the sit- 
uation to the entire satisfaction of the official sent 
along with the English warships, and entered into a 
compact with him to resume the payment of interest 
and to provide for the refunding of the debt so soon 
as it was possible. About the same time the English 
government discovered what Napoleon really was 
working for — that is, the usurpation of the Mexican 
government by means of his tool, Maximilian — and 
promptly and rather roughly denounced the treach- 
ery, declaring that England would be no party to it. 
The Spanish government also, having made a satis- 
factory agreement concerning the money question 
with the ministers of Juarez, withdrew from further 
cooperation and retired its vessels. Meantime, the 



Mexico Prepared. 117 

designs of the French emperor became a matter of 
common knowledge. 

It will be necessary, however, to go back for a mo- 
ment in order to trace more minutely the events 
which in Mexico itself led up to the situation ex- 
isting in 1864. During 1859, i860, and 186 1, the 
war between the generals who supported the gov- 
ernment of Juarez and the constitution of 1857, and 
those who were under the direction of the Church 
party, continued with great bitterness. After the 
flight of Comonfort at the beginning of 1858, the 
conservatives established a government in Mexico of 
which Zuloaga was for a time the leader. Several 
states to the north meantime formed a coalition and 
raised an army to support the constitution. This ar- 
my was defeated at Salamanca, March 8, 1858; and 
for the constitutionalists thereafter disaster followed 
disaster. Only Vera Cruz, where Juarez had taken 
refuge, held out. Generals Miramon and Marquez 
became the leading spirits of the conservative party, 
Miramon occupying a so-called presidential office 
for two or three years. The sympathy of the mass 
of the people with republican principles gradually 
strengthened the cause of Juarez as the war pro- 
gressed. Many citizens emerged from the state of 
indifference into active partisanship with the pa- 
triots goaded by the inexcusable cruelties of the 
clerical leaders. Marquez, especially, was guilty of 
so many and such atrocious murders that his name 
is execrated to this day in the country which he lived 



2i8 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

but to disgrace, and where he died a few years ago, 
old, poor, decrepit, forgiven by a generous govern- 
ment, but unpardoned by an outraged pubhc. 

Again and again Miramon, who was an able mil- 
itary leader, menaced Vera Cruz, but it remained im- 
pregnable. During the existence of this short-lived 
and futile conservative government, it negotiated a 
ruinous loan at the hands of a Swiss banker named 
Jecker, an obligation that afterwards figured largely 
in the quarrel between France and Mexico as an al- 
leged casus belli. All that it produced, and all that 
the conservatives were able later to wrest from the 
people in forced loans and otherwise, was at last ex- 
hausted, while the ragged patriots, instead of dimin- 
ishing in numbers, seemed to increase. Under Gen- 
erals Gonzales Ortega, Degollado, Berriozabal, Za- 
ragoza, and others, the constitutionalists kept up the 
fight, becoming bolder and bolder and not at all dis- 
mayed by an occasional defeat. In December of 
i860 Miramon staked all in a great battle with Or- 
tega, and was overwhelmingly defeated. He lost 
his artillery, his army was annihilated, and he him- 
self barely escaped from the field with a few follow- 
ers. Returning hurriedly to Mexico, he turned over 
all authority remaining to him to the Ayuntamiento 
and left the country. January i, 1861, Juarez en- 
tered his capital in triumph. 

During that year the French troops were landed 
in Mexico. The government at once entered into an 
agreement with the envoys who accompanied them. 



Napoleon's Diplomacy. tig 

representing France, Spain, and England, that these 
troops should only occupy certain specified points, 
pending the negotiations concerning the financial 
questions which had brought about the invasion. 
These negotiations were not very lengthy. A settle- 
ment satisfactory to Spain and to England was, as 
has been stated, soon reached, and their war ves- 
sels w^ere withdrawn, all the sooner, indeed, because 
in both these countries the purpose of Napoleon 
began to be suspected, and the public and the op- 
position members in parliament began to ask un- 
comfortable questions. Napoleon's plans being not 
yet mature, he was almost at a loss for an excuse 
to keep the soldiers in Mexico till the time should 
arrive for his coup d'etat. Some of the pretexts 
he made use of were a good deal like those the 
wolf urged against the lamb in the fable. As a 
witty speaker in the French parliament said in 
debate, "First it was declared that we must in- 
vade Mexico because Mexico is calling for us; now 
it is to punish her for not calling for us4'" 

The stubbornness with which the French troops 
persisted in remaining on Mexican soil after the 
others had retired but confirmed Juarez in his already 
well-grounded suspicion that Napoleon had designs 
on the independence of Mexico. The astute presi- 
dent could not fail to have information of the man- 
ner in which the Mexican conservatives were play- 
ing into the hands of the invader. Profoundly 
stirred by the treachery of this attack on his coun- 



120 A Ne\v Era in Old Mexico. 

try's freedom, and foreseeing but too clearly the 
bitter conflict which was inevitable unless it should 
be soon checked, Juarez issued early in 1862 a proc- 
lamation warning both Mexicans and foreigners 
against taking part in this attempt on the nation's 
liberty, and declaring that all who disregarded his 
warning placed themselves outside the law. It was 
this proclamation which was later held to warrant 
the death sentence against Maximilian himself. 

In the spring of 1862 Count Lorencez landed in 
Vera Cruz with a large addition to the French 
troops, and at once advanced into the interior. By 
the middle of April hostilities began. The recently 
defeated conservatives welcomed the French, and in 
Cordova, which the invaders had taken possession 
of, "pronounced" against Juarez and set up a rival 
government with Almonte at Its head. At the be- 
ginning of May the French advance reached Puebla, 
where, on May 5, was fought the most famous bat- 
tle in Mexico's history. To the surprise of every- 
body concerned, the ragged peasant army of the pa- 
triots defeated the French veterans. Zaragoza, the 
Mexican general, could not hold his ground, and 
later temporarily retired, but the fact remained that 
the Mexicans had proved the French not to be in- 
vincible. The country thrilled with patriotic pride 
at the news, and scarce a city in the republic is to- 
day without its street or plaza called "Cinco de 
Mayo" (Fifth of May). 

For nearly a year Puebla interposed a barrier to 



The French in Mexico City. 121 

the French who had been driven back from its gates. 
Then, after a long and terrible siege by Marshal Fo- 
rey, it was forced to capitulate, the patriots losing 
nearly ten thousand men in prisoners, including Gen- 
erals Ortega, Alatorre, Berriozabal, and others. Or- 
tega's note of surrender is a proud, dignified, and pa- 
triotic document, which deeply impressed even his 
enemies. 

Juarez was thereupon driven from his capital, 
which became untenable when Puebla fell. The 
French troops and the conservatives occupied it, and 
the plans for importing an emperor were rapidly 
consummated. One of Napoleon's pretexts was the 
Jecker claim. Now Jecker was not a Frenchman, 
but a Swiss, and the money had not been borrowed 
by Juarez, but by the conservatives, who were doing 
all they could to destroy the government of Juarez. 
Nevertheless, the president, rather than submit to in- 
tervention, had at last agreed to assume this debt. 
Jecker was well protected. He held bonds covering 
more than twenty-five times the amount of money 
he had advanced. The whole thing was absurd. 

The truth is, Napoleon hoped to get money out of 
Mexico. He expected to help Maximilian's em- 
pire in such a way as to bring it under lasting obli- 
gations to himself. Then he counted on colonizing 
French settlers in the rich mining regions of the 
country he was attempting to exploit. In it all he 
seems to have quite left out of his calculations the 
wishes of the Mexican people, — unless, indeed, he al- 



122 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

lowed himself to be persuaded by Eugenie that the 
ecclesiastics who were clamoring for a Catholic mon- 
archy were the true representatives of that people. 

The French soldiery and the subservient conserva- 
tives set up a quasi government in Mexico. Napo- 
leon's money was paying the wages of foreign troops 
who were harassing the scattered liberal armies and 
driving Juarez from one city to another, further and 
further north. By this time there wxre nearly fifty 
thousand French soldiers in Mexico. 

An "assembly of notables" consisting of two hun- 
dred and thirty-one members, representing ostensi- 
bly every Mexican state, was called together in Mex- 
ico City, July, 1863. It adopted an "act" declaring 
in favor of the monarchical form of government 
and offering the throne to Ferdinand Maximilian, 
Archduke of Austria. Several representatives of the 
conservative party, then in Europe, were appointed a 
committee to make the official tender to Maximilian, 
and if he failed to accept, to any other European 
Catholic prince whom the emperor of the French 
should designate. To the surprise of everybody, 
Maximilian replied to the committee that he w^as un- 
willing to go to Mexico unless invited by the people 
of that country. The matter was therefore referred 
back to Marshal Bazaine, then in command of the 
French troops in Mexico and the virtual head of the 
conservative government, and a vote favorable to 
Maximilian, of all the prominent cities then "occu- 
pied by the French bayonets" was promptly secured. 



Maximilian and Napoleon. 123 

Maximilian, upon news of this, declared himself sat- 
isfied. He at once signed a compact releasing his 
claim to the Austrian throne (he was a brother of 
the present Emperor of Austria), and another with 
Louis Napoleon, the latter exhibiting but too plainly 
the animus of the wily Frenchman. It was a con- 
tract that from the income of the Mexican empire 
should be returned the money advanced to pay Max- 
imilian's debt on his palace at Miramar and for the 
expense of his voyage to Mexico, the outlay for the 
French troops in Mexico, the Jecker claim, etc. — in 
all amounting to one hundred and seventy-three mil- 
lions of dollars;- a good round public debt to hang 
about the neck of an infant empire. 

This was in April, 1864. By the 29th of the fol- 
lowing May the new emperor with his wife Carlota 
had arrived at the port of Vera Cruz, and the cur- 
tain rose upon a great modern tragedy : in the month 
of June, 1867, just three years later, it was rung 
down. Maximilian w^as dead and Carlota insane. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

The French Intervention. (IL) 

Having trace4 with some particularity the events 
that led up to the intervention in the ^affairs of Mex- 
ico of the French emperor and to the setting up of 
the so-called empire of Maximilian, it will not be nec- 
essary to follow the history of that empire in detail. 
From the point of view of Maximilian, the whole 
thing proved a ghastly mistake. But Maximilian 
was amiable rather than able. He was as deficient 
in real acuteness of mind as in firmness of will. 
From the beginning he allowed himself to be vic- 
timized by the designing Napoleon and the reaction- 
ary party in Mexico, the latter availing themselves 
in influencing him of the sanctions of the Church. 
Caught in the vortex of a deadly struggle between 
warring elements among the Mexican people, his 
sympathies were rather with those who opposed than 
with those who supported him. He was especially 
unhappy in the selfishness, the avarice, the cruelty, 
and the retrograde political theories of those who 
surrounded his court and became his advisers. It 
was also his unenviable lot, a foreigner himself, to 
depend for the stability of his government upon hire- 
ling foreign troops, execrated by the Mexicans and 
themselves by no means enamored of the task that 
had been set them. 



Maximilian's Mistake. 125 

Besides these essential weaknesses of his situation 
he was opposed by the bull-dog tenacity of Juarez 
and the natural instincts of virtually the whole Mex- 
ican people. The moral strength of this resistance 
was, early in the struggle, vastly increased by an ill- 
judged procedure upon Maximilian's part. In the 
autumn of 186 /it was reported to him that Juarez 
had crossed the border into the United States. This, 
according to the constitution, forfeited his right to 
the presidency. He had indeed been careful not to 
take the step, but Maximilian doubtless believed the 
report which came to him. Instigated probably by 
Bazaine, he promulgated therefore, October 3, 1863^ ^^ 
a decree to the effect that all persons found in arms 
against the empire, now the only existing and right- 
ful government, should be treated as rebels and, aft- 
er trial by court-martial, be put to death. Almost 
immediately several prominent officers in the insur- 
gent army, Generals Arteaga and Salazar and Colo- 
nels Diaz and Villagomez, were captured at Urua- 
pam and executed. The French troops were com- 
manded by their officers no longer to take prisoners, 
but to put the vanquished to the sword. These meas- 
ures naturally produced a tremendous reaction. 

The empire had no income worth speaking of, and 
from the first began to sink into hopeless bankrupt- 
cy. When the close of the Civil War in the United 
States left the American government free to turn its 
attention to the manifest affront to the Monroe doc- 
trine of which Napoleon had been guilty, and 



126 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

with a great army of veteran troops at hand to 
enforce its demands ; and when the conviction was at 
last forced upon Napoleon himself that Mexico was 
not the gold mine he had imagined it to be; and 
when also the patriot army, rallying from the de- 
feats that had marked the beginning of this last 
struggle, began to press hard upon the heels of the 
retiring French troops, it was plain to be seen that 
the toy empire was doomed. 

The rapidly shifting panorama of Mexico's inte- 
rior affairs during the dark days when our own coun- 
try was beginning slowly to recover from her gi- 
gantic and bloody struggle is one of the romances 
of history. The glittering court of Maximilian and 
Carlota, who seem now like children playing with 
gilded toys upon the edge of an abyss; the cynical 
double-dealing of Napoleon, as treacherous with 
Maximilian in withdrawing the French troops as he 
had been with Mexico in introducing them ; the 
sturdy constancy of the little Indian president, driv- 
en from pillar to post, till he was crowded at last 
against the very northern boundary of the country 
at Paso del Norte (now named Juarez in his hon- 
or), yet stoutly proclaiming himself through it all 
the true and legitimate ruler of Mexico ; the gradual 
development into deadly efficiency of the ragged pa- 
triot forces, — all this is a story well worth the tell- 
ing, but which I cannot delay here to give at length. 

Tn t866, hurried thereto by a rough intimation 
from W. H. Seward, then the American Secretary 



French Troops Withdrawn. 127 

of State, and by the presence on the northern border 
of Mexico of a body of veteran American troops, 
Napoleon advised MaximiHan that he was going to 
withdraw the French army from Mexico. Foreseeing 
the inevitable result of this, Maximilian reluctantly 
agreed that his wife should hurry away to the 
French court to see if she might prevail upon Na- 
poleon to alter his decision and to keep the "Treaty 
of Miramar," as it was called. That treaty provided 
for the gradual withdrawal of the French troops 
during a number of years. But Napoleon was feel- 
ing too severely the pinch of the dead expense of 
sustaining this army, and rightly dreaded a collision 
with the United States. His mind was made up. 
Carlota upon her arrival was treated with such 
scant politeness, and her pleadings so rudely reject- 
ed, that she left Paris the victim of a mania of fear 
and anxiety which soon destroyed her reason. Her 
interview with the pope a little later was the raving 
of a hysterical and already half-crazed woman. 

Maximilian, upon the news of this, and witnessing 
the preparations for the retirement of the French 
soldiers, was ready to abdicate and return himself 
to Europe. Well for him had he carried out this 
thought. Indeed, he did set out for Vera Cruz, hav- 
ing prepared a proclamation in which he abandoned 
the throne, and went as far as Orizaba. But the 
Mexican clericals complained, cajoled, and threat- 
ened. They appealed to his sense of honor and his 
supposed obligations to them. The officials of the 



128 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

Church promised to replenish his depleted treasury 
from their strong box. A majority of his Council 
of State refused to accept his abdication. So at last, 
after several months of vacillation, he returned to 
the capital. 

Failing the French generals, he now welcomed 
back to Mexico the conservative military leaders, 
Miramon and Marquez. These men, though at- 
tached to his cause, he had hitherto kept abroad on 
various missions, since their reputation in Mexico 
was somewhat unsavory. To them he now intrust- 
ed the task of reorganizing the imperial army. He 
selected a new cabinet and, throwing himself into the 
hands of the Mexican conservative party, prepared 
to witness the final act in that long and losing strug- 
gle which it had waged with the forces of freedom. 
His wife was already a hopeless lunatic; his broth- 
er, the Emperor of Austria, had forbidden him to 
return to his native land; his mother wrote him in- 
sisting bitterly that he perish amid the ruins of his 
empire rather than longer be a dupe of Napoleon; 
his dreams of establishing a popular and successful 
government for Mexico was plainly blighted. Un- 
der the stress of these afflictions he bore himself with 
a manly serenity more creditable to him than any- 
thing else in his career. 

The funds that had been promised from the cof- 
fers of the Church were given but grudgingly. As 
rapidly as possible the royalist troops were got into 
some sort of organization. The city of Queretaro, 



Maximilian at Queretaro. 129 

being a stronghold of the Church, which was at that 
point very wealthy, seemed to be a favorable place 
for their concentration. Maximilian, placing him- 
self at the head of the army, took up his quarters 
there, and the constitutionalists, accepting the chal- 
lenge, began to concentrate upon this city, famous al- 
ready as the birthplace of the revolution of 18 10. It 
lacks much, however, of being an ideal place in the 
military sense for defensive operations. The repub- 
lican troops, having already cleared the northern part 
of the republic of their enemies and opened the way 
for the return southward of Juarez and his cabinet, 
had been gathered into one body under General Es- 
cobedo until they outnumbered the royalists, whom 
they probably also excelled in military skill and mo- 
rale. This Maximilian himself, with that frankness 
which was one of his most attractive traits, acknowl- 
edged. Writing a short time before to one of his 
ministers concerning the need of reorganizing his 
own army, he said of his opponents : "The republi- 
can forces, wrongly represented as demoralized and 
united solely by the hope of pillage, prove by their 
conduct that they form a homogeneous army whose 
stimulus is the courage and perseverance of a chief 
moved by a great idea, — that of defending the na- 
tional independence which he believes threatened by 
our empire." In such words he confesses that it was 
a misconception which gave birth to his ill-advised 
and most unfortunate decree of October 3, 1863^ ^ 
Queretaro, after sharp preliminary fighting, was 
9 



I30 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

surrounded by an overwhelming force, and besieged 
from the middle of March to the middle of May, 
1867. May 15, the besiegers broke into the city. Its 
defenders made a sally, and Maximilian with a few 
followers attempted to escape. On a neighboring 
hill, the ''Cerro de las Campanas,'' he was captured, 
brought back to the now surrendered plaza, and with- 
in a few days put upon trial before a court-martial. 

The one blot upon the proceedings of the victori- 
ous republican government on this occasion was the 
constitution of this court. It was made up of a lieu- 
tenant colonel and six captains, all so youthful as to 
excite the suspicion that they had been selected in 
accordance with some plan to insure their verdict. 
With this exception the proceedings were entirely 
regular. The charges were treason, filibustering, 
etc., based almost w^holly on the presidential decree of 
1862. Miramon and Mejia, the two leading Mex- 
ican conservative generals, were placed on trial at 
the same time and under the same charges. All were 
allowed able counsel, but all were nevertheless con- 
victed and condemned to death. 

Juarez, now at San Luis Potosi, not far away, 
was pressed to modify the sentence of Maximilian. 
Telegrams poured in upon him from all over the 
world. Influential IMexicans and foreigners went 
post-haste to plead with him in person. His feelings 
were deeply moved upon, but he remained firm. *'The 
welfare of the people demands it," he replied to ev- 
ery plea; "I cannot set myself above the public 



The Execution. 131 

good." To a protest which reached him from South 
America he replied with some warmth that he was 
doing as he did not for his own sake, nor even for 
that of Mexico alone, but for the sake of every strug- 
gling American republic. The student of history, 
however keen may be his sympathy with the un- 
fortunate Maximilian, will probably have to agree 
that the instincts of Juarez in this matter were sound. 
He settled for a long time, if not finally, the ques- 
tion of whether it is worth while for a scion of Eu- 
ropean royalty to attempt the transfer of his authori- 
ty to American soil. 

On June 19, 1867, the sentence of the court, passed 
five days before, was executed. Maximilian, Mira- 
mon, and Mejia were taken to the Cerro de las Cam- 
panas and shot. They met death like brave men, 
Maximilian exclaiming, "May my blood be the last 
that is shed in sacrifice for this country !" 

The infamous Marquez had been dispatched a 
short time before the fall of Queretaro to Mexico for 
reenforcements. There he gathered a small force 
and, instead of returning to the help of his chief, em- 
ployed his time in wreaking private and petty grudges 
in his usual brutal manner. Meantime Porfirio Diaz 
had rallied the scattered patriots in the south and 
laid siege to Puebla, the scene of so many conflicts 
between royalists and republicans. Before Marquez 
could come to its aid he had forced its surrender, 
April 2, 1867; after which he immediately proceeded 
to invest Marquez in Mexico City. During the in- 



132 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

terval between the fall of Queretaro and the execu- 
tion of Maximilian he was slowly pressing in upon 
this last stronghold of the imperial troops, unwilling 
to storm the city where there were many adherents 
of the republic and which he foresaw would soon be 
forced to surrender. Marquez was at last put aside 
by others, and by skillful hiding escaped when the 
city was captured. On June 20, the next day after the 
death of Maximilian, the capital of his empire was 
unconditionally surrendered to one of the youngest 
and one of the strongest of the patriot generals. The 
intervention was at an end. July 15, 1867, Pres- 
ident Juarez, with his cabinet, the "Inmaculados," 
as they came to be called, quietly entered again the 
capital of his country. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
What the Republic Faced. 

For the second time in these studies we have thus 
come to the final triumph of the independent repubUc 
over its inveterate foes, at home and from abroad. 
The cooperation of the CathoHc Church with the en- 
emies of a repubHcan form of government became at 
last so open that it was no longer on either side even 
a pretended secret. That the strength of that Church 
as an opponent lay more in its immense wealth than 
in its hold upon the common people, powerful as this 
was, became evident to the leaders of the liberal par- 
ty. From this it came to be with them a matter of 
public policy to cut the sinews of that strength by 
annihilating the wealth in which it lay. When to 
this consideration was added the stern satisfaction 
of despoiling a powerful, implacable, but at last van- 
quished enemy, to say nothing of the crying demands 
of their own impoverished treasury, it may easily be 
guessed that the work of spoliation was thorough. 
Gomez Farias, Juarez, Lerdo de Tejada, Ocampo, 
and the rest, were slow to be convinced that in the 
confiscation of the Church's wealth was the only hope 
of the republic ; but having at last put their hand to 
the plow, they did not look back. 

While this is true, it is also to be said, to the credit 
of all concerned, that scarcely ever in history has a 

(133) 



134 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

victorious party converted to the uses of the nation 
so large a booty with so little of scandal attaching to 
individuals for appropriating to themselves for pri- 
vate use the fruits of public victory. Many a scarred 
veteran of the patriot army became, it is true, the 
proprietor of some huge shell of a ravished chapel 
or of the rambling and thick-walled cloisters of some 
abandoned convent. But this was always by virtue 
of a clear title from the federal government, and 
meant that a poverty-stricken though victorious re- 
public had no other means of rewarding the men 
whose fidelity and valor had wrested victory from 
the grasp of foes so numerous and so powerful. Jua- 
rez, the great leader, virtually all-powerful after the 
triumph of his party in 1867, was singularly indif- 
ferent to the blandishments of wealth. As he had 
proved himself incorruptible and unpurchasable in 
the days of his poverty and threatened defeat, so 
now he successfully met the still severer test of vic- 
tory and power, emerging with an untarnished name. 
Reconstruction after a period of civil war is at 
best a delicate and tedious business. In Mexico, 
when victory over the French brought peace at last, 
the task of Juarez and his associates was not merely 
reconstruction — it was rather construction. There 
had never been a civil government of independent 
Mexico worthy the name, and indeed, to tell the 
whole truth, the vice-regal government under Spain 
had been a good deal of a travesty on the name. 
While, therefore, at some points in the previous his- 



The Republic and Citizenship. 135 

tory of Mexico's affairs our rapid review of them has 
shown complex and puzzling situations, that period 
upon which we now enter will be found, if possible, 
more confusing still. It is simple enough to say 
that upon the ruins of the Maximilian empire the in- 
domitable Juarez raised the fabric of a free republic, 
and this the dazzling genius of Porfirio Diaz has, 
through more than three decades, confirmed and 
beautified. Such a statement is, happily, strictly true. 
Yet it by no means tells us all of the recent history 
of the Mexican people, nor does it disclose those con- 
ditions now prevailing in that country, concerning 
which the intelligent and S3mipathetic student will 
wish to be informed. Upon the study of those con- 
ditions this and the succeeding chapters will under- 
take briefly to enter. They must be, therefore, even 
less strictly historical than those which have pre- 
ceded. 

No matter how ideally perfect a system of pop- 
ular government may be, it remains dependent for 
its successful exemplification on the character of the 
people who adopt it. A single man of genius may 
be a successful monarch or military dictator. A 
small group of men, trained in the science of gov- 
ernment, may carry on a centralized oligarchy. But 
if a government by the people is to succeed, the gen- 
eral average in character and intelligence of the peo- 
ple must be such as to fit them for the duties of sov- 
ereign citizenship. To be a sovereign citizen is, in 
other words, a very different matter from being a 



136 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

subject citizen. It is at this point of the fitness of the 
citizen that popular governments oftenest meet disas- 
ter. Much study has, at one time and another, been 
given to the elaboration of republican constitutions. 
But the most beautiful of these instruments will at 
times refuse to "march." A good workman can pick 
up a defective or broken tool and with it turn off 
finished and beautiful products, while in the hands 
of one who is unskilled and inefficient the finest in- 
struments are useless ; the implements themselves are 
ruined, and the work remains ill done. It is the as- 
sumption of sovereign obligations by the citizen 
whose training and character have not made him a 
sovereign in spirit that has so repeatedly brought 
popular government into disrepute. 

The best friend of Mexico will not deny that she 
has run, and is even yet running, a great risk at this 
point. Indeed, what else could have been expected ? 
Had the hardy and self-reliant Indians whom Cor- 
tez found been put at once upon a course of training 
for it, it is probable that they might very soon have 
been brought to the point of readiness for self-gov- 
ernment. But this was not done. The Spaniards of 
the sixteenth century exhibited in an uncommon de- 
gree that sense of superiority which too often pos- 
sesses powerful and highly civilized peoples, render- 
ing them oblivious to the human rights and claims of 
nations less favored. It did not occur to these Span- 
iards that the natives of Mexico would ever again 
wish or need to govern themselves. A distorted re- 



Spanish Ideals. 137 

ligious conception but accentuated the domineering 
nationalism which made the conqttistadores indiffer- 
ent to any rights of the Indians. They looked upon 
them as subjects of the evil one, to be reduced by 
any sort of means, fair or foul, to allegiance to Christ 
and his vicegerent on earth. As to their civil rights, 
history contains no evidence that their conquerors 
ever even thought of their having any. So greedy 
were they and the Spanish sovereign whom they rep- 
resented of the gold of the New World, that the de- 
spoiling of whole peoples of their sacred liberty in the 
effort to seize it seemed to them but an insignificant 
incident. Sad as is the spectacle of the religious 
fanaticism of these invaders, the auri sacra fames, 
which, like the lash of some unresting, unforgiving 
Fury, ever drove them on, is sadder still. In a burst 
of cynical confidence one of the Spanish leaders on 
a certain occasion explained to a dignified Indian 
chief the Spanish thirst for gold. "The fact is,'' he 
said, "all our people suffer from a dreadful disease 
for which gold is the only known remedy." 

In these two elements just indicated — the under- 
taking to convert, vi et armis, if necessary, all these 
slaves of the devil to the service of his holiness the 
pope, and the exploitation as enemies of the Spanish 
crown of all who set up any barriers, however slight, 
to the seizure of their property — began the Spanish 
regime in Mexico. Had it been deliberately calcu- 
lated to unfit the inhabitants of that unhappy country 
for exercising at any future period the privileges and 



138 A New Era in Old Mexico, 

the responsibilities of self-government, it could not 
have been gauged with more disastrous accuracy. 
For to this suppression of individuality in the reli- 
gious and civil realm was promptly added the social 
obloquy which could not but follow\ Thus in all the 
three avenues of moral expansion, the development 
of the Mexicans was hopelessly crushed and atro- 
phied. In the social fabric, wealth and intellectual 
culture asserted their sway. In civil matters, the 
iron rule of the despot was enforced by a soldiery 
equipped with arms and an organization incompar- 
ably superior to any known to the Aztec warriors. 
In the realm of spiritual things, the despotism was 
even more absolute and irresistible. The Indians 
believed in the spirit world with that direct and un- 
questioning faith common to childlike nations. Of 
the terrors of that future state they entertained not 
the slightest doubt. Those terrors the priests held 
in their right hands. The whole life of the poor In- 
dian, from his first faint cry to the moment of the 
death rattle in his throat, was weighed down by the 
sense of this spiritual tyranny. He must be bap- 
tized in unconscious infancy, confess, pay tithes, 
build churches, make pilgrimages, etc., all his life; 
and at the end, no matter how diligently he had kept 
the Church's rules, be shrived in dying, else all would 
be in vain. Indeed, he had to see to it besides that 
his body after death rested in consecrated soil ; for 
all of which he was offered the poor boon of a term 
in purgatory ! 



The Native Population. 139 

As an accompaniment of these varied forms of 
oppression — virtually unconscious oppression, be it 
said, though the merit of the qualification is open to 
doubt — the denial of the right of the peons or indi- 
genas to intellectual training came as a matter of 
course. It was a question, even, subject to grave dis- 
cussion, whether they had souls. That they had 
minds fit to be trained was considered preposterous. 
To distinguish them from the natives, Spanish and 
Creoles were called gente de razon, "people of rea- 
son." The implication was that the Mexicans were 
incapable of reasoning. How a stupid notion of this 
kind could persist in the face of the facts of ordi- 
nary and constant observation must be accounted 
for by the reflection that those were the days of the 
deductive philosophy. People explained the world 
by means of previously formed conclusions, instead 
of formulating the conclusions themselves by observ- 
ing and classifying the facts of life. 

In proof of the intellectual sprightliness of the na- 
tive Mexicans, facts indeed abounded. Despite the 
enormous advantages of the invading Spaniards, the 
Mexicans continued to hold their own in population, 
as well as in every avenue of competition where the 
terms were at all equal. They intermarried with 
their conquerors without injury to the stock, and the 
Mestizos, or children of mixed marriages, held their 
own with the domineering "old Spaniards" quite as 
well as did the Creoles, that is, the people of pure 
Spanish blood born in Mexico. The careful student 



140 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

of Mexico's history and of her population, while he 
will be forced to allow the disastrous consequences 
of the social and political system prevailing there for 
the past three centuries, will, nevertheless, discover 
to his satisfaction that comparatively few of the ills 
from which that country suffers and has suffered 
are to be traced to the native defects of the native 
races. On the contrary, he is likely to conclude that 
few peoples could have submitted for three centuries 
to a despotism so complete and so ingeniously detri- 
mental to national character and have emerged so 
creditably as have the Mexicans. The vitality — phys- 
ically, intellectually, and morally — of a people who 
after this long enslavement were able to rise up and 
break the bonds that had held them, and who through 
a whole century of stubborn fidelit}^ to liberty have 
kept on with their disheartening task of shaking off 
successive series of shackles, is itself the bow of 
promise for the future. Surely what Mexico may yet 
have to undergo before attaining to her ideal of a 
government by the people is less than what she has 
already undergone. 



CHAPTER XV. 
Legacies of the Spanish Regime. 

At the risk of having to set down in plain lan- 
guage some rather distasteful facts, we must pro- 
ceed to particularize the general indictment of the 
last chapter. It was there said that had the Spanish 
regime in Mexico been deliberately calculated to pre- 
vent the development of a national capacity for self- 
government, it could not have been more effective 
for the purpose than it was. It was not so calcu- 
lated, of course. Such a contingency as the prefer- 
ence by the Mexicans of any sort of government to 
the "divine right" monarchy of Spain seems not to 
have occurred to the political economists of the time. 
Yet latent in many of the political measures for the 
government of Spain's provinces was the deep-seated 
conviction of the Romish hierarchy that democracies 
are atheistical and irreligious. In those palmy days 
of the Inquisition, the legislation of the Spanish 
kingdom took color from the tenets of the Church, 
and many of the repressive enactments, such as the 
curbing of free speech, the prohibition of certain in- 
dustries, and the like, as well as the government's 
wholesale disregard of its obligation to provide for 
the enlightenment of the governed, are doubtless to 
be traced to this age-long hostility of the Catholic 
Church toward popular government. 

(HI) 



i^ A New Era in Old Mexico. 

That the completeness with which the Mexican 
people have been defrauded of that training which 
they needed for self-government may properly ap- 
pear, let us see for a moment what are the elements 
in national character essential to the success of pop- 
ular government. They are few and, like most ele- 
ments of human character, simple. The nation is 
made up of individuals. As an aggregate of these 
it can exhibit no traits which they do not possess, 
nor any perfection in essential traits which is not 
first exemplified in a majority of its constituent 
atoms. The prime requisites for the assertion of na- 
tional liberty are that men shall know their rights and 
have the manhood to assert them. This demands 
both enlightenment of mind and strength of will. 
But when independence is accomplished and the task 
of setting up a government under the guardianship 
of liberty is undertaken, then an even heavier strain 
is put upon mind and will. Henceforward it is not 
merely the knowledge of our own rights, but the abil- 
ity to recognize where they are limited by the rights 
of others, that calls for an acute and trained intellect. 
And necessity is now upon the will not simply to re- 
sist the encroachments of some tyrant and assert 
against the world the inalienable rights of man. That 
is a role which, if not easy, is at least congenial. 
But in a republic men need not only to assert them- 
selves but to restrain themselves. Respect for the 
rights of others makes constant demands upon their 
power of self-control. Of the three necessary steps in 



The Oldest American College. 143 

the training of the sovereign citizen, this self-con- 
trol is the last, the hardest, and the most essential. 

The training which the Mexicans under Spanish 
rule received instead of helping them in any of these 
essential things, hindered them in all. They were 
not instructed that they might know what are the 
rights of men. They were not allowed to assert 
themselves as to anything, temporal or spiritual, that 
they might develop will power and self-respect. 
And most especially, being kept constantly in a state 
of childlike tutelage, they learned little of the mean- 
ing of self-control. 

Concerning the first count in this bill of charges it 
is unfortunately possible to speak with but too much 
assurance. Rome has never counted it a virtue in 
people to know a great deal, and though the Roman 
Catholic missions in the Spanish colonies had as one 
of the agencies of their propaganda schools of a 
certain sort, neither they nor the government of 
which they were so nearly a part took these enter- 
prises seriously. The oldest college on American 
soil, the Colegio de San Nicolas, now situated in 
Morelia, founded about 1544, was in the beginning 
a missionary agency for the preparation of Indian 
candidates for the priesthood. That training, in the 
conception of its founder, and even more so as car- 
ried on by those who took up his work, had little 
relation to the general subject of the education of the 
people. It was confined to a small and privileged 
class, and was, moreover, of a highly technical and 



144 ^ New Era in Old Mexico. 

special character. This prototype of American col- 
leges was indeed far too much a type of the sundry 
seminaries and monastic schools which were later 
scattered through New Spain. They had no appre- 
ciable effect in lifting up and illuminating the masses 
of the native population. As has been already ob- 
serv^ed, the Spaniards, missionaries as well as sol- 
diers and civil rulers, doubted whether the Indian 
had sufficient of either soul or brains to become a 
civilized man. He was taught that it was a great 
concession when he was admitted to baptism and 
declared a ''Christian." Otherwise, he would have 
remained an "animal." 

As the centuries crept by, the zeal and the unself- 
ish enthusiasm of the early missionary days died 
out. The people were virtually all brought into al- 
legiance to the Church. The schools, as a mission- 
ary agency, were no longer needed. That they were 
desirable for any other purpose seems to have oc- 
curred to nobody. The people were left in igno- 
rance, and, since they knew no other possibility, it 
was mostly contented ignorance. How sluggishly 
this great mass awoke to the stimulation of the ideas 
of freedom, of independence from the oppression that 
had weighed upon Mexico for so long, will be re- 
called by those who have followed even in brief out- 
line the story of Hidalgo's uprising. It is but too 
evident, even to the casual student, that had not the 
movement for independence from Spain sprang up 
in Mexico at a time when the Spanish government 



The Church and Freedom of Thought. 145 

was helpless, — being during no small part of the 
struggle virtually nonexistent, — it could never have 
attained to any measure of success. That other and 
similar and probably successful movements would 
have followed is quite certain. But it was only the 
nerveless state of Spain which gave opportunity at 
the time Hidalgo began his agitation for that slow 
and long-continued propaganda that at last took hold 
upon the untrained thought of Mexico's native pop- 
ulation. 

It was not merely in the failure to provide schools 
and to intervene directly in the mental training of 
the Mexican native races that Spain sinned against 
their intellectual development. That development 
was hindered, was indeed rendered virtually impos- 
sible, by the whole atmosphere in which these races 
had their first contact with European civilization. 
They were not allowed to think for themselves in re- 
gard to any of life's interests. The Church declined 
to permit it in religious things, because to think at 
all exposed them to the danger of thinking wrongly. 
Orthodoxy was held to be more desirable than intel- 
ligence. As the ecclesiastical system gradually de- 
parted from that primitive purity of purpose and of 
interest in the welfare of the people which had 
marked the early missionaries, it grew into an elab- 
orate scheme of prerogatives and dignities belong- 
ing to the priests and bishops, concerning which these 
dignitaries were excessively jealous and watchful. 
The due subjection of the people was a matter of first 
10 



146 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

importance, and the obedience and acquiescence 
which were exacted of them left nothing to the 
chance of individual initiative. 

Scarcely less autocratic were the social and civil 
exactions. On every hand the Indian was made to 
feel himself a nobody. He was ''commended" to the 
care of ''Christian" miners and land-owners in great 
herds, in order that he might be trained in the Chris- 
tian faith. His labor, once his own, was now by 
some hocus-pocus made to enrich the conquistador. 
Innumerable petty social and civil exactions pressed 
upon him. He could not ride horseback. He was 
not allowed to dress in the same fashion as the Span- 
iards, nor to carry arms. The estimate put upon 
him is well defined by the rule that in a court of law 
the word of one Spaniard was of equal weight wnth 
that of six Indians. 

The naturally amiable and submissive temper of 
the Mexican people was by such treatment gradu- 
ally degraded to a servile and helpless attitude very 
far removed from that independence of spirit and 
sprightliness of mind essential to freemen. Indeed, 
as a matter of fact, many of the natives were re- 
duced to slavery, and only the fierce denunciations of 
a few warm-hearted priests, with the intervention, 
from time to time, of a philanthropic viceroy, kept 
the humane provisions of the Council of the Indias 
concerning human slavery from being abused even 
more than they were. The resistance offered by the 
poor Indians themselves was insignificant. The one 



Mexico Has Done Well. 147 

good thing which their new rehgion did for them 
was to give them a definite doctrine of, and an abid- 
ing faith in, God. This faith was accompanied, un- 
fortunately, by a sort of cheerful fatalism altogeth- 
er congenial to their temper and condition. What- 
ever ills came to them they were in the habit of ac- 
cepting with a shrug and a smile, — Es la voluntad de 
Dios! "It is the will of God." The phrase was ap- 
plied many times to situations in which its theolog- 
ical accuracy is not so evident as its devoutness of 
spirit. 

The student of Mexican national development as 
affected by national character will often be at a loss 
whether to attribute certain aspects of it to native 
and more or less ineradicable traits or to the in- 
fluence of this long tutelage under Spain. The peo- 
ple display no great aptitude for self-government. 
For this they have been much criticized. A sym- 
pathetic consideration of the powerful Influences 
from without that have molded them to a character 
as far as possible removed from the ideal of freemen 
will serve to change much of that criticism to a kind- 
lier estimate. When to the duress under which they 
received foreign Influences is added the repressive 
and enervating character of those influences, the 
wonder is not that since being thrown upon their 
own resources they should have done so ill, but that 
they have done so well. 

When all has been said that the fairest estimate 
of the facts will warrant, it remains true that the 



148 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

Mexicans, previous to the advent of the Europeans, 
had taken only the first step toward the development 
of a national civilization. They were essentially a 
primitive and savage people. Excepting the arts of 
a rude sort of warfare, and some of the rudiments of 
civil government, largely still upon the tribal basis, 
they had everything to learn. It is only within re- 
cent times that the duty of nations to each other has 
begun to take even a slightly altruistic tinge. Can- 
ada and Australia have grown into self-govern- 
ing nations as English colonies, and right-minded 
governors of India are striving, — against enormous 
odds, no doubt, — to bring that old and strange con- 
geries of peoples up to the conception of some sort 
of autonomy. Cuba has been set up for herself by 
the United States; and any real evidence that it 
would be worth while would promptly bring a simi- 
lar provision to one or all of the Philippine Islands. 
But three hundred years ago lands of the New World 
were not colonized for the good of those lands them- 
selves, but for the glory and enrichment of the col- 
onizers. Spain set no standard of possible local au- 
tonomy before her in dealing with Mexico. The 
conception was utterly foreign to the spirit of the 
time, and even more to the Spanish temper. The 
measures adopted were all primarily concerned with 
the mother country and with those who represented 
her in this New World. If they were humane and 
Christian enactments, that proceeded wholly from 
the Royal Council's conception of what was decent 



The Inquisition. 149 

and becoming to Christian Spain, not from any pur- 
pose to conciliate or to train the people lately brought 
into subjection to her arms. 

The charge of having emasculated the national 
character of the Mexican people does not lie simply 
against the temper and mode of procedure of .the 
Spanish government. In these that government but 
reflected the spirit of the time. The real onus of the 
indictment is upon those fundamental religious and 
social principles upon which the civilization of Spain 
itself had been reared, and which, during the cen- 
turies in which Mexico was losing so much, united 
with Mexican gold to disintegrate and wreck the 
Spanish civilization also. It was the subserviency 
of civil affairs to the dominating spirit of the eccle- 
siasticism of southern Europe which prepared the 
way for that most disastrous culmination of obscur- 
antism known to history, the Spanish Inquisition. 

The Inquisition was the apotheosis of autocratic 
tyranny. It not only attacked the right of the indi- 
vidual to civil liberty, to freedom of person in the 
material concerns of life, but carried the havoc of an 
unfeeling tyranny into the still more sacred realm of 
the spirit. It is bad enough to hold that a man can- 
not do as he would; it is a hundred- fold worse to 
deny him the privilege of thinking as he would. 
The ravages of the Inquisition among the submis- 
sive and meek-spirited Mexicans were, if possible, 
more terrifying than in Spain itself. That there 
were still, after three centuries, those who dared defy 



150 A Ne\v Era in Old Mexico. 

it and think and plan for freedom, is one of those 
miracles of history for which the student will find he 
must be constantly prepared. To quench the love of 
liberty in the human heart is an undertaking so hope- 
less that one must fain trust that soon it will be for- 
ever given over. The record of government regard- 
less of the w^ishes of the governed has been already 
long enough drawn out. It will be well if in the 
future the function and powers of government be 
otherwise employed. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The Republic Triumphant. 

We have paused for these general considerations 
in order that there might be a more sympathetic un- 
derstanding upon the part of the reader of the prob- 
lem Mexico faced when in 1867, the French inter- 
vention having been brought to its end^ she again 
undertook the task of self-government. The ob- 
stacles to a democracy by which she, had been dur- 
ing fifty years repeatedly thwarted were now, in 
part, at least, eliminated. The principal of these 
were outside interference, a monarchical tendency 
at home, ambitious military leaders, and a med- 
dlesome hierarchy, doubly powerful through its 
immense wealth. The first and second of these were 
now effectually disposed of. With the blood-stained 
body of Maximilian were buried the hopes of the 
monarchists at home. His tomb is also a stumbling- 
block to European princes which seems likely to 
continue to cool any ardor they might otherwise de- 
velop for attempting to set up an American king- 
dom. Opposition from the two remaining foes was 
checked but not ended. The clergy, stripped of their 
wealth and to a very large extent also of their pres- 
tige, remained nevertheless a potent influence in the 
life of the nation. As for ambitious and unscrupu- 
lous soldiers, men who prefer selfish aggrandize- 

(151) 



152 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

ment to the welfare of their country, it was, unfortu- 
nately, too much to expect that a type which had so 
long been conspicuous in Mexico's history would 
suddenly and finally disappear. 

It was these restive military leaders who filled 
the land with turmoil during the four remaining 
years of the life of President Juarez. As soon as 
possible after gaining control in 1867 of the entire 
country, he issued a proclamation calling for a gen- 
eral election. Instead of limiting this to the ordi- 
nary choice under the constitution of a president, a 
chief justice, and the members of the national con- 
gress, he thought it an excellent time for the people 
to pass also upon certain constitutional changes 
which seemed to him desirable, — provision for a sen- 
ate, the conceding of a veto power to the president, 
etc. Since the constitution itself provided the prop- 
er order for its own amendment, many affected to 
see in this proclamation a disposition upon the part 
of Juarez to override it. The people, though for the 
most part they refused to vote on these new pro- 
posals, elected a congress favorable to Juarez, by 
whom he was in due course declared to be the con- 
stitutionally elected president. Sebastian Lerdo de 
Tejada was made president of the supreme court, 
an ofiice carrying with it the succession to the pres- 
idency in the event of the president's death. 

During the intervening months Juarez had taken 
occasion to proclaim a general amnesty for all the 
partisans of the government of Maximilian, though 



Administration of Juarez. 153 

without conferring upon them the right to bear arms 
or hold office. Even this generous treatment, how- 
ever, did not satisfy them. Instead of being thank- 
ful that they had not been executed or banished as 
traitors, they at once began an agitation against 
Juarez because he was so severe. Lerdo, who saw 
how easily he had been advanced to the position 
next in prestige to the presidency, gradually drew 
away from Juarez, whom he had hitherto supported 
with great loyalty, and began to form, especially 
among the opposition members in congress, a new 
party of "Lerdistas." 

But it was, as has already been said, the military 
which gave most trouble. Foreseeing this, Juarez 
had, among the first of his official acts after obtain- 
ing control, reorganized and reduced the army. Its 
total strength was placed at twenty thousand men 
organized into four divisions, commanded respect- 
ively after the reorganization by Generals Regules, 
Porfirio Diaz, Escobedo, and Corona. The discre- 
tionary powers hitherto committed to generals as to 
recruiting and campaigning were now withdrawn, 
and all were put under the immediate orders of the 
president as commander in chief. This wholesale 
reduction of the army of course left many generals 
and colonels without a command. Besides, the men 
who, scattered through all sections of the country 
and largely independent of one another, had with 
most admirable harmony presented a united front 
to the foreign invader, were unable now to agree 



154 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

amon^s^ themselves, the pressure from without hav- 
in^g^ been withdrawn. 

Juarez was not himself a soldier. But he was a 
man of the most extraordinary personal valor. Time 
and a^ain he saw not merely his government im- 
periled and all that he held dear in danger of an- 
nihilation, but his own life even hanging in the bal- 
ance. It was impossible to break in upon his per- 
sonal serenity. His calmness and decision in the 
most critical and urgent situations bound to him 
in an extraordinary way the military leaders upon 
whom he was forced to lean for support; and the 
common soldiers, and even the civilians, who were 
once and again called upon to protect him from per- 
sonal violence never hesitated to do so, though it 
was often at the price of their own lives. 

From 1868 to 1872 the uproar was continuous. 
Regiments, brigades, isolated squads, as the case 
might be, put forward the claims of some favorite 
leader who had "proclaimed" against the govern- 
ment, and had, one after the other, to be met and 
defeated. Whole states declared against certain 
acts of the federal congress or of the executive, and 
had to be coaxed or cudgeled into adhesion. In the 
congress itself, the conservatives, shifting to this 
new field the opposition which had so long tried 
in vain the arbitrament of arms, kept a clamor- 
ous minority hanging upon the skirts of the presi- 
dent and clogging as far as it could every advance 
step. 



Juarez Reelected. 155 

But Juarez was used to turmoil. To the noisy 
opposition in congress and to every new insurgent 
in arms he presented the same calm, imperturbable 
front. Alert, ready, puissant, he handled troops, di- 
rected campaigns, watched the clericals, kept peace 
in his cabinet, showing himself by every token the 
man of destiny. 

The election of 1871 came on. A feeling was 
general that Juarez ought to give place to some 
other. To this he would not agree. Whether he 
was the victim of an old man's jealous ambition, or 
honestly thought it was unsafe for the country to 
risk a change at that time, will never be known. 
His friends took one view, his enemies another. 
Even his friends admit that this was the greatest 
mistake of his life. Both Lerdo and Diaz received 
a heavy vote for the presidency, but Juarez was 
elected. Lerdo, still at the head of the supreme 
court, took occasion of the general discontent to in- 
crease his party in congress, even holding out a 
friendly hand to the embittered conservatives. Gen- 
eral Diaz, who some time before had resigned his 
place in the army and retired to private life, vexed 
at this continuance in power of a chief who seemed 
indisposed to give way to other ambitious and able 
men, issued his Plan de la Noria. In this he pro- 
posed to set aside the government and the consti- 
tution and call a general assembly to reorganize the 
whole basis of civil government. The document 
does him no great credit, nor did the rather guer- 



156 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

rilla-like campaign in which he with a few followers 
supported it. 

The fiercest of all the outbursts, however, and one 
that for a moment threatened the most serious con- 
sequences, took place in Mexico City. October I, 
1 87 1, just a month after the election of the presi- 
dent for another term, but before his inauguration, 
like a bolt from the clear sky broke forth the insur- 
rection of the garrison at the capital. The regiment 
having charge of the police headquarters murdered 
their colonel and released all the prisoners. In the 
principal barracks near by, the whole force was in- 
volved. Had a really able leader been found, the re- 
sult might have been disastrous. But before night 
Juarez had the revolutionists besieged in the bar- 
racks where the disturbance began, which that 
night were stormed by his faithful and valiant gen- 
eral, Rocha, and the movement was crushed. A 
number of the leaders, and not a few of the sol- 
diers, were summarily condemned by court-martial 
and shot. This action produced an exciting episode 
in congress when Zamacona, the most active of the 
supporters of Diaz — who were beginning to call 
themselves *'Porfiristas" — bitterly criticised the gov- 
ernment, for which the able patriot-poet, Guillermo 
Prieto, had the unenviable task of being spokesman. 

With his usual vigor and success Juarez set him- 
self the w^'nter and spring succeeding to bring order 
out of what had threatened to become chaos, and by 
the summer of 1872 was again firmly intrenched 



Death of Juarez — Character. 157 

in his position as constitutional president. His 
courage and coolness, as well as his respect for law 
and order, may be seen in the fact that he made no 
effort to displace Lerdo, though aware that he was 
constantly intriguing with the enemies of the gov- 
ernment. July 18, 1872, Juarez died, somewhat 
suddenly and from a disease of the heart. To such 
characterization of him as may be gathered from the 
preceding pages it will perhaps be well to add here 
the brief estimate left by his friend and associate, 
Jose Maria Iglesias, himself an able and incor- 
ruptible patriot: ''Although Don Benito Juarez was 
a man of exceptional capacity and not wanting in 
intellectual training, it may be said that neither his 
native intelligence nor his learning was of the first 
rank. His real merit — which may justly be de- 
clared exceptional — is to be traced to his extraor- 
dinary traits of character. His firmness in matters 
of principle was immovable. To his principles he 
held at any cost of effort or sacrifice. Adversity 
could not vanquish, prosperity could not spoil him. 
So extraordinary was his passive personal courage 
that to many it seemed mere insensibility. So hon- 
est did he prove himself to be that every opportunity 
of personal enrichment offered by his long career 
was carelessly put aside. If it is to be admitted 
that he clung a little too persistently to his place of 
power, it is also to be added that he was ever gov- 
erned by patriotic motives." 

Lerdo, by virtue of his position as president of 



158 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

the supreme court and in conformity to the consti- 
tution, assumed the presidential office. As soon as 
congress assembled in the autumn he was confirmed 
therein, virtually without opposition. During his 
term ad interim he had published a proclamation of 
amnesty for the imperialists, removing most of the 
disabilities under which Juarez had resolutely kept 
them, but not yet granting all that they demanded. 
The partisans of Diaz were quiescent for the time 
being, since they had been acting with the Lerdistas 
against the party of Juarez, and were not ready at 
a moment's notice to break the friendly bonds thus 
formed. 

Lerdo, a sprightly, eloquent, handsome, and able 
man, had a comparatively quiet term. Only one 
serious military episode disturbed the country's 
peace. Don Manuel Lozada, an ignorant but able 
Indian of the territory of Tepic, who had favored 
the intervention and been lauded by Maximilian and 
the French emperor, kept still in his mountain fast- 
ness, a sort of Cave of Adullam, where his renegade 
force was constantly recruited. General Ramon 
Corona, in command at Guadalajara, had long since 
begged to be allowed to crush this nest of traitors, 
but the government refused. Early in 1873 they 
swept down upon him at a time when his forces 
had been greatly depleted, and only by the most 
heroic fighting at a disadvantage in numbers of four 
to one, did he defeat and scatter these dreaded ban- 
ditti. He was thereafter rightly looked upon as the 



Reform Laws Confirmed. 159 

savior of Guadalajara, the devastation of which city 
would inevitably have followed his defeat. 

In civil matters the most significant event of the 
term of Lerdo was the act of September 25, 1874, 
finally approved and promulgated in December of 
that year, elevating to the rank of organic consti- 
tutional law the Leyes de Reforma, especially those 
proclaiming the separation between Church and 
State, the liberty of worship, that matrimony is a 
civil contract, that churches cannot hold real estate, 
that the religious oath in courts shall be substituted 
by a protest or promise to speak the truth, and that 
convents and monasteries are illegal. This set the 
final seal upon the confiscation of the ecclesiastical 
property, a step which even Maximilian, with all 
his devotion to the Church, had approved by not ab- 
rogating the contracts for the sale of this property 
made under the original law of Juarez. 

One term was not sufficient to satisfy the ambi- 
tion of Lerdo, and though, when the case of Juarez 
was under consideration, he had opposed the practice 
of allowing a president to be reelected at the end of 
his period in office, he now, as his own quadrennium 
drew to a close, began to seek to secure the place for 
himself during another. He was ambitious, not 
over-scrupulous, and especially averse to taking ad- 
vice. His election was forced through by the open 
use of federal power, and duly proclaimed by con- 
gress, October 26, 1876. The storm then burst, and 
with tremendous violence. 



CHAPTER XVII. 
PoRFiRio Diaz and the Arts of Peace. 

The events which in 1876 made General Diaz in- 
stead of Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, who had served 
part of the previous term and been reelected, chief 
ma^^istrate of Mexico were both dramatic and pain- 
ful. After the election that autumn the situation 
changed with lightning-like rapidity. Judge Jose 
Maria Iglesias, an honest and high-minded man, 
had been reelected chief justice of the supreme court. 
Without having before taken sides openly between 
the Lerdistas and. the Porfiristas, though supposed- 
ly favorable to the president, under whom he had 
just served three years, Iglesias was so outraged by 
the manner in which Lerdo had forced his own 
reelection that he declared it fraudulent. Retiring 
.to Salamanca, in the wealthy state of Guanajuato, 
whose governor favored him, he proclaimed himself 
to be, under the constitution, the legitimate pres- 
ident and proceeded to organize his cabinet. 

More ominous still was the revolutionary move- 
ment which had broken out early in the year under 
General Hernandez, so soon in fact as Lerdo had 
announced his intention of again becoming a can- 
didate for the presidency. This proniincianiiento 
against him is known as the Plan of Tuxtepec. 

General Diaz later took it up and with certain mod- 
(160) 



General Diaz Becomes President. i6i 

ifications made it his own. He was at the time the 
ablest and most popular military leader in the coun- 
try. The collisions between his forces and those of 
the Lerdist party were frequent and bloody. He 
was rapidly gaining on the president, who was not 
himself a soldier, when the defection of Iglesias 
cut the ground completely from under Lerdo. 
Vexed at Iglesias, and despairing of holding his 
own against Diaz, he quietly slipped out of Mex- 
ico by night, leaving the capital in possession of the 
Porfiristas who had just gained a decisive victory 
over the government troops. The exiled president 
took refuge in New York, where he remained till 
his death, some fourteen years later. 

Diaz promptly moved against Iglesias, but the 
latter, though stubborn in his opinion that he was 
:the legally constituted president, had not sufficient 
troops to undertake a campaign. He therefore, — 
after a personal interview with General Diaz, as 
some insist, — quietly withdrew to the Pacific coast 
and took ship for San Francisco. 

The field was now clear. General Diaz ordered 
an election for president, as both president and chief 
justice wxre gone, and was himself elected without 
oposition, taking charge of the government May 5, 
1877, for the presidential term to end November 30, 
1880. Succeeded when that time came by Gen- 
eral Manuel Gonzales, — the first time, by the way, 
that the presidency had ever passed peacefully from 
one man to another, — he was again elected in 1884, 
II 



i62 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

as he has been at each election since that date. This 
brief statement completes the story of Mexico's po- 
litical changes. 

But why is it, the reader will be asking, that 
President Diaz has been able to keep the peace when 
all others before him had failed? The answer to 
that is necessarily manifold, yet the mystery is less 
than it seems. The explanation is to be found first 
in the man himself, and secondly in the measures 
which, being what he is, he has adopted. One or 
two fortuitous conditions from without must also be 
taken into the account. Of these the most essential 
has already been discussed at some length. When 
the Church and its orders were deprived of their 
wealth, then the most fruitful source of aiTned re- 
bellions was dried up. Without the work of Juarez 
that of Diaz would have been impossible. The prin- 
ciples of the constitution, after the way for them 
was cleared by the Leyes de Reform a, have proved 
a solid foundation for a peaceful administration 
which has continued now for nearly thirty years. 

To this favoring circumstance are to be added a 
few others. One of these is that the people were 
exceedingly weary of war. It had devastated the 
country, demoralized society, annihilated commerce, 
choked agriculture, made uncertain the tenure of 
life and property, and sent to a bloody grave the 
flower of the nation's youth. The common people, 
caring little for the elective franchise, and knowing 
nothing of governmental questions, were at last 



Outline of Diaz's Life. 163 

willing that anybody who wished should be presi- 
dent so long as they were left in peace. 

Again — and this means more than would appear 
— the military competitors of Diaz were nearly all 
older than he. They rapidly died off. The probabil- 
ity of a successful revolution against a general of 
his experience and tried skill thus soon became in- 
finitesimal. Not many were foolish enough to try 
the experiment. 

Finally — though for this the president himself 
was largely responsible — the advent of the railways 
during the early eighties made it possible for the 
government to handle its troops with a speed and 
efficiency which, a thing never before possible, 
nipped revolutions in the bud. 

Turning from external and largely adventitious 
conditions to the man_, we shall find in President 
Diaz himself the best explanation at once of his 
success and of the measures by which he has insured 
it. First of all, he is a popular hero. A native (born 
September 15, 1830) of the patriotic state of Oax- 
aca, which has given to the republic both Juarez 
and Diaz, the persecution of the jealous and ever- 
suspicious Santa Anna turned him from his chosen 
pursuit of the law into a soldier's life while he was 
yet a young man (1853). From then till the end 
of the French intervention, his career was one of ad- 
venture. Active, athletic, a horseman, a swimmer, 
a rifle shot, he is still at seventy-four a vigorous and 
handsome man. His numerous thrilling adventures 



x64 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

and his fearless handling of his troops have made 
his personal valor a matter of common knowledge, 
v^'hile his generosity to opponents and his loyalty to 
friends, his devotion to good government, and, last 
of all, his unbroken success, have made the Mexi- 
can people look up to him with confidence and admi- 
ration. 

He has accomplished that transition which has 
been the despair of many of the world's great cap- 
tains. After success as a soldier he has proved him- 
self also a great civil ruler. The men who have done 
this can almost be counted on the fingers of one 
hand. Those who have failed are far more numer- 
ous. It must be allowed that he has been spared 
one crucial test. The scripture which warns the 
soldier to do violence to no man, and to be content 
with his wages, touches the vices which are surest 
to result from the military^ life — harshness and av- 
arice. The administration of President Diaz has 
been autocratic and stern. It is not worth while to 
deny this. Measures have been carried out by him 
which, as well as the manner of their administra- 
tion, would have been deeply resented in some coun- 
tries. His reply to objections concerning them is 
that he knows his own people. Happily this is true. 
They have been too long accustomed to autocratic 
rule to resent it now. The president has, therefore, 
not had to change radical!}' the principles upon 
which he exacted discipline while a soldier. He is 
still, essentially, a military ruler. 



His Conciliatory Policy. 165 

In the matter of avarice he is, fortunately, con- 
stituted much as was Juarez. No doubt he has 
laid aside some wealth during these thirty years; 
but he has never cared enough for money to cause 
serious offense. He is not ostentatious; he is not 
greedy. The country was on the verge of anarchy 
when the administration of President Gonzales came 
to a close in 1884, and friends and enemies alike 
were clamoring for "Don Porfirio." The principal 
reason was that the bluff old soldier, who had just 
taken his turn in the chief magistracy, had devel- 
oped an enthusiasm in money getting that scandal- 
ized the whole country while bringing into sharp re- 
lief the self-restraint of Diaz. 

The president of Mexico is also a broad-minded 
man. Men who had opposed him in the days of his 
disputes with Juarez and with Lerdo, — "Juaristas" 
and *'Lerdistas," — were nevertheless given places 
under his government, some even in the army, com- 
mensurate with their ability. Their tenure was, of 
course, dependent on their loyalty to their new chief. 
Others, army officers especially, were retired on full 
pay. A few ventured on "pernicious activity'* 
against the government, and were promptly exiled 
or dealt with even more severely. But many of his 
former enemies became his stanch friends and sup- 
porters. A conspicuous case was that of Sr. Romero 
Rubio, who was in 1876 a most active Lerdista. 
Ten years later he was a prominent member of the 



i66 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

cabinet of President Diaz, who had meantime mar- 
ried his daughter ! 

No little of breadth has been displayed in his deal- 
injsf with the question of foreigners in Mexico. Pop- 
ular prejudice against them had long been intense. 
The country was extremely provincial. The Cath- 
olic Church created sentiment against the incoming 
of influences which might disturb its unquestioned 
sway. The war with the United States and the con- 
sequent loss of territory made suspicion of Ameri- 
cans easy and natural. Every addition to their num- 
ber in Mexico was declared to be in furtherance of 
the intention of the United States to take possession 
of the whole country. Wealthy monopolists also, 
dreading the incoming of competition, made com- 
mon cause with retrograde priests and narrow poli- 
ticians in decrying the foreigner. 

Against all these influences Diaz resolutely set 
himself. He took the ground that a sparsely set- 
tled, poor, and backward country needed foreign set- 
tlers and capital to develop it, and would be the bet- 
ter if it would learn from these foreigners some of 
their modern and progressive ways. The matter of 
railroads became a crucial question. The president 
saw distinctly two things. One was that railways 
were necessary both to the stability of his govern- 
ment and the development of the country; and 
the other, that Mexicans would not build them. 
Only a few of his people had sufficient money, and 
they would not invest it in that way. So he frankly 



Internal Improvernents. 167 

encouraged foreign corporations. The roads were 
subsidized. Congress granted favorable conditions 
as to tariffs during, and for a time after, construc- 
tion. The president used this as an entering wedge 
to encourage other foreign investments, and by giv- 
ing all foreigners generous treatment and full legal 
protection, he won their warm good will. The value 
of this to his administration has not been slight. 
Probably five hundred millions of foreign money 
are now invested in that republic. With the friendly 
backing of men controlling all that, the financial 
standing of the government is easily assured. 

We pass thus from considerations of the personal 
traits of Mexico's president to an examination of 
the measures by which he has made the last three 
decades the most peaceful which that country has 
seen for a century. No one of them has been of 
such consummate wisdom as to justify the claim 
for him of genius. Yet they have been, without ex- 
ception, marked by a certain practical sagacity and 
sense of proportion which for everyday affairs are 
quite as valuable as genius. For the country at large 
and for his government in relation to it, the chief 
problems which President Diaz found were those 
of policing, finance, and development. How he met 
them is, in detail, a long story. Yet the outline is 
simple, as we shall see. 

First of all was the protection of the government 
and of the people from their enemies. Brigands had 
taken possession of the highways and mountain 



i68 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

passes, and crimes against person and property had 
long gone unpunished. As for enemies of the gov- 
ernment, there were left, here and there, a number 
of influential generals who could see no impropriety 
in their following the custom that had so long ob- 
tained in Mexico of seeldng by force to take pos- 
session of the supreme power. The Church party 
also, who recognized in Diaz a determined and un- 
compromising liberal, one who had had much to 
do with the defeat of their pet scheme of the French 
intervention, though beaten and deprived of much 
of their resources, were by no means ready to give 
up the fight. 

To meet this situation Diaz kept the men of real 
influence and ability, whom he suspected of revolu- 
tionary designs, constantly under his surveillance. 
They were well provided for and left in apparent 
liberty, but they understood what risks a false move 
involved. Even the patriotic Escobedo, the hero of 
Queretaro, was for good reason exiled from the 
country before the end of Diaz's first term. During 
the second (in 1886) General Garcia de la Cadena 
began laying plans for an uprising in the state of 
Zacatecas. In the midst of them he was apprehend- 
ed by the local authorities and promptly executed, 
whether by direction of the president or not is not 
known. Some of the leading patriot generals were 
made governors of the different states, virtually 
subject to appointment by the president, and others 
were left in command of various bodies of troops. 



The Rurales. 169 

The standing army itself was scattered throughout 
the country. Even now its separate brigades and 
regiments are not often left long at any one place, 
especial care being taken to prevent too much of in- 
timacy between the army and the citizens. From 
all of which it will be seen that, availing himself of 
the widely extended telegraph system and the rail- 
ways which now reach almost every section of the 
country, the president has been able to keep his hand 
on the military situation in a manner which has 
Virtually made insurrections impossible. 

To eliminate brigandage he organized a sort of 
federal mounted police. Congress enacted certain 
specific laws regulating their duties and function, 
but it was from the beginning understood that they 
were to be virtually under the personal direction of 
the president. They are well mounted, well paid, 
and, dressed in the picturesque charro riding habit, 
form a body of troops which captivates the Imag- 
ination of adventurous young men. Their efficiency 
has from the first been remarkable. When these 
rurales go after a bandit they usually get him. This 
efficiency was notably increased by a shrewd move 
on the president's part. Getting into communication 
with some of the leading brigands, he made them the 
unique proposition that they should cease to be rob- 
bers and join his police force. A number of them 
accepted. The fate of the rest was then sealed. 
The formality of trial and execution for brigandage 
in out-of-the-way mountain regions is often dis- 



170 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

pensed with by means of what is called the Ley de 
Fuga, — that is, if a prisoner runs he must be shot. 
Many a wretched murderer has been left weltering 
by the roadside, the sergeant in charge merety re- 
porting that he attempted to escape. 

Train wrecking was indulged in by the lawless 
for a time. Thereupon congress, at the president's 
instance, passed a law depriving of the right of trial 
by jury, and of other constitutional guarantees, any 
man who should be proved to have had anything to 
do with derailing or robbing a train. The effect 
was instantaneous. Train robbing ceased. Now 
Mexico is one of the best policed countries in the 
civilized world. The traveler may penetrate its most 
remote mountain fastnesses with the assurance that 
in some near-by village is a squad of gray-coated 
rurales, keeping a sharp watch on the wild trails and 
wild people about him. 

The financial measures of the Diaz administra- 
tion, and the steps taken by it for the development 
of the country and people, will occupy us in the fol- 
lowing chapter. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Thirty Years of Progress. 

In 1876 the poverty and backwardness of the 
Mexican people were such as showed but too clear- 
ly the disastrous effects of fifty years of almost con- 
tinuous civil war. Theirs is a country of vast nat- 
ural wealth and of almost unlimited resources. But 
agriculture had languished, and commerce had been 
cramped by foolish tariff restrictions between state 
and state, by lack of transportation facilities, and 
by interminable political disturbances. The govern- 
ment was without prestige at home or credit abroad. 
Treaties made by Juarez at the close of the inter- 
vention had temporarily quieted the restlessness of 
foreign investors, since rather than leave to other 
governments any possible pretext for dissatisfaction 
he had actually assumed some of the compromises 
and obligations of Maximilian. Experiments in va- 
rious kinds of taxation had been undertaken at dif- 
ferent times in the country's history, but the chief 
dependence of the federal government was alwa3^s, 
as it is yet, upon import duties. The country, not 
being given to manufacturing, imports extensively 
the finished products which its people require, and 
the income from tariffs is steady. Under President 
Diaz a stamp tax and various forms of internal rev- 
enue have been experimented with. The old bonded 

(171) 



172 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

debt held in England was, in 1886, after one or two 
previous efforts had failed, refunded, and the rate 
of interest reduced. The movement of commerce 
has been greatly stimulated by the advent of rail- 
ways, and agriculture and mining have flourished 
by reason of continued peace. 

The president has been especially scrupulous to 
maintain, by prompt payment of the interest on all 
its obligations, the credit of his government. As 
the money of the country is on a silver basis, while 
the interest on its bonds is payable in gold, when in 
the early nineties the price of silver sank so rapidly, 
and w^hen along with that came a drought that in 
1893 approached the dimensions of a famine, the 
government found itself in sore straits. An ap- 
peal was made to the federal employees, who there- 
upon agreed to contribute a percentage of their sal- 
aries till the national treasury should be able to ad- 
just itself to these unfriendly conditions. This is 
rightly looked upon as a notable instance of the pa- 
triotism of the Mexican people and of their con- 
fidence in President Diaz. This period of financial 
depression, with the continued reduction in the ex- 
change value of silver, had one unexpected but hap- 
py result. The people began to manufacture many 
things which they had hitherto imported. The raw 
materials and the labor could be had at their old 
prices in a silver currency while the higher exchange 
operated with the high tariffs to hinder the importa- 
tion of finished products. The general scarcity of 



Important Fiscal Measures. 173 

fuel throughout the country will, however, be al- 
ways a bar to the extensive development of manu- 
facturing interests in Mexico. 

The government, under the able direction of Mr. 
Jose Ives Limantour, Secretary of the Treasury, 
has in recent years overcome its many financial han- 
dicaps, and is now in a comfortable way. Its credit 
abroad is stable, its current expenses — among which 
has not yet been included a navy — are promptly 
met, and its resources are constantly increasing. 
The fluctuations in the price of silver still, of course, 
cause much inconvenience. After many efforts, 
the several states have at last been cleared of their 
local customhouses, their local coinage, and of vari- 
ous other relics of their former provincial status, all 
of which had long hindered the industrial advance- 
ment of the people. Thirty years of peace for the 
development of agriculture, during which time mon- 
ey has poured into the country for investment in 
mining, railways, and manufacturing, have added 
immensely to the people's wealth, while giving op- 
portunity for the development of popular education, 
a free press, municipal improvements, and the va- 
ried arts of modern civilization. 

From the beginning the liberals have advocated 
popular education. The ignorance of the people 
they rightly held responsible for their slow progress 
in civilization, and especially for their inert sub- 
serviency to a self-seeking hierarchy. It was this 
power of the conservative leaders over the masses 



174 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

that time and again defeated the plans of men who 
sought the Hberation and enUghtenment of the 
whole people. As soon as possible after getting con- 
trol of things, Juarez planned an elaborate public 
school system, modeled in a large measure upon that 
of the United States, of which he had made a study. 
This was set in operation in the federal district and 
in as many of the states as could be persuaded to fol- 
low the example. It has during the administration 
of General Diaz been carefully elaborated and devel- 
oped, becoming more and more efficient as time 
demonstrates to a naturally conservative people its 
value to their country. 

It has had from the beginning to contend with 
the implacable hostility of the Church. No longer 
able to wield its old influence in the military and 
political affairs of the country, the Catholic Church 
still reigned well-nigh supreme in the social realm. 
All persons who had any pretensions to wealth and 
social standing were under strict orders from it. To 
show friendship to any of the progressive measures 
of the liberals was to invite anathemas and social 
ostracism. The public schools especially came under 
the ban as atheistical and plebeian. Both teachers 
and pupils placed themselves by the very fact of 
their connection with the public school among the 
excommunicated and religiously outcast. 

This produced two effects. First, it greatly 
cramped the development of the public school sys- 
tems. Outside the cities and larger towns, in those 



Public Schools and the Church. 175 

smaller communities where the word of the priest 
is paramount, these schools have made their way 
very slowly indeed. Only by the resolution of some 
public-spirited citizen will they be found to exist at 
all in such communities, and then probably at a poor 
dying rate. 

The other result of this hostility will seem insig- 
nificant to some, though really it is a most serious 
matter. In the absence until within very recent 
years of any other presentation of Christian truth 
than that of the Roman Catholic Church, and by 
virtue of the exaggerated claims of that Church, it 
was taken for granted in the minds of most Mex- 
icans that any one who broke with the Catholic 
Church was, ipso facto, an atheist. The poor but 
ambitious young man or woman who saw in the pub- 
lic schools the only means of securing an education 
was convinced beforehand that to be educated meant 
to be a skeptic. Even the professors, many of whom 
ought to have known better, admitted the implica- 
tion, and, however ill in some instances it may have 
suited their inclinations, allowed themselves to be 
classed with the unbelieving. 

The public schools became by all this the hope of 
the lowest social stratum. People of that class had 
not much to lose, and felt that there might be some- 
thing in the schools to gain. Means of rising from 
their poverty and ignorance had never before been 
offered them. The Indian had come into his own 
at last. How they have profited is a most engaging 



176 A Ne\v Era in Old Mexico. 

story. The girls especially have forged upward 
through the various grades of primary, secondary, 
and high school work, completing often with nota- 
ble merit the state normal course, and going out 
from homes of poverty and squalor to be the teach- 
ers of the next generation. The physical and in- 
tellectual vitality of the lower classes is superior to 
that of the wealthy families, many of whom are 
showing the deterioration of three hundred years of 
pampering. One result of these new opportunities 
for the poor must be a leveling of the social distinc- 
tions that have long cursed Mexico, and thus a dis- 
tinct impulse to the development of a real and vital 
democracy. 

These recent years have seen the amelioration of 
the poor in other respects than in educational priv- 
ileges. Some old laws concerning the relation be- 
tween farm laborers and the owner of the land, 
which reflected the feudalistic spirit of the vice-regal 
administration, and by which the laborer was vir- 
tually the slave of the land-holder, have at last been 
abolished. The substitution of various kinds of 
script, redeemable only by those issuing it, for mon- 
ey in the payment of wages, and the circulation in 
several states of a depreciated local currency, gave 
the federal government much concern till both were 
at last abolished. The states have little by little 
come to accept the well-established principle of tax- 
ing the land, though it had never before been done, 
since the owners of the land were precisely the men 



Effects of the Reform Laws. 177 

who made the laws. The abolition of alcahalas, or 
duties charged upon goods entering a state, or even 
a city, lifted from the back of the poor agricultural- 
ist one of the heaviest and most unreasonable bur- 
dens he had been called upon to bear. Most of the 
reforms just mentioned have been forced, a little at 
a time, upon reluctant states by the persistency of 
the federal government. 

The beneficent results of some of the Leyes de 
Reforma, upon whose enforcement President Diaz 
has resolutely insisted, are beginning at last to make 
themselves distinctly felt. Among these none have 
been more important to public morals than the laws 
concerning civil marriage and the secularization of 
the cemeteries. One of the standing abuses of the 
old ecclesiastical system was in the enormous fees 
charged by the priests for marriage. Although 
philanthropic popes and bishops issued from time to 
time proclamations regulating this fee, they came 
to nothing. The practice of the priests was to 
charge every cent they thought the bridegroom could 
pay, and to refuse to proceed with the ceremony till 
the money was in hand. As a result, the poor often 
omitted marriage entirely. This brought wide- 
spread disaster to the morals of the people. The 
law of Juarez made marriage purely a civil matter. 
It is carefully safeguarded by all due precautions, 
but is free, a small fee being allowed for the ex- 
pense of recording, etc. If the contracting parties 
wish a religious ceremony also, they are free to have 
12 



178 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

it, but it has no legal status. The people were slow 
to incur the anathemas of the priests by availing 
themselves of this law, but they have now begun 
almost universally to do so. 

The cemeteries were also a means of extortion. 
By insisting that all dead should be buried in con- 
secrated ground and by consecrating only a small 
area, the clergy made that area abnormally valuable 
and were able to collect immense revenues out of 
the lease and sale of plats. Under the present law 
the cemeteries must be controlled by the municipal- 
ities or by some other government entity, and their 
regulations, charges, and management generally are 
subject to civil enactment and made matters of pub- 
lic knowledge. 

Such are some of the lines upon which is proceed- 
ing the social and political development of the Mex- 
ican people as guided by the dominating personal- 
ity of President Diaz. It should be remembered 
that, to a degree which can scarcely be comprehend- 
ed by one not actually conversant with affairs there, 
what the federal government does means what Gen- 
eral Porfirio Diaz wishes done. It is to his ever- 
lasting credit that the measures which he has in- 
stigated have been so nearly always for the good of 
the people, and not merely to gratifv his own whims 
or to advance his personal interests. He has accom- 
plished much. Much remains to be done. Let us in 
the next chapter briefly review some of the problems 
and difficulties which still await him. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

The Situation To-day. 

In Mexico as elsewhere the poHtical well-being of 
the people is inseparably bound up with their moral 
condition. The effect upon public and private 
morals of many of those influences with which our 
studies have been concerned was necessarily pro- 
found. So far, however, this has been lightly passed 
over. An intimate acquaintance with its people 
and some knowledge of those causes which, involun- 
tarily to themselves, have operated to put them at a 
disadvantage morally, will cause the student to hes- 
itate before bringing a general indictment against 
any nation. The careless traveler, writing after su- 
perficial observation, will lay on his colors thick. He 
is sure that the moral shortcomings which are 
strange to him, and therefore peculiarly abhorrent, 
are worse than those of his own people. But a more 
careful balancing of causes and effects and a more 
profound study of the essential unity of human na- 
ture will often serve to show that the differences 
seemingly so wide are really in degree rather than 
in kind, in manifestation and not in essence. Hu- 
man nature as found in Mexico, native and import- 
ed, was from the first the ordinary article. Such 
moral warp, therefore, as it seems now to show 



i8o A New Era in Old Mexico. 

must be charged, in so much as it is at all peculiar, 
to peculiar influences brought to bear upon it. 

Some of the most important of these have been 
pointed out. First of all is to be reckoned the priva- 
tion of enlightenment. It was bad enough that the 
Indian was not educated for the duties of citizen- 
ship and in order that he might rise in the social 
scale. But a far deeper and deadlier injury was 
done him by denying him moral instruction. Re- 
ligious liberty on the basis of an open Bible and free- 
dom of worship is the greatest boon that can be be- 
stowed on a nation. It bears directly and essen- 
tially on the development of individual character. 
There can be no better training in the self-reliance 
and initiative needed for the ordinary affairs of 
life than is had by dealing at first hand and from 
childhood with the momentous issues of religion. 

The Bible is, in other words, the pioneer of lib- 
erty. It was precisely because of this that those 
who did not desire that Mexico should be free kept 
the Bible from her people. In so doing they ac- 
complished their object of perpetuating a submis- 
sive spirit among them, but at the cost of that moral 
degeneration which the lack of such instruction as 
is imparted by the Christian Scriptures is sure to 
produce. The Mexicans were taught to consider 
themselves Christians, yet were denied the Chris- 
tian literature which alone could give them to under- 
stnr . the meaning of the term. The result was a 
pro^'^und and widespread confusion as to the na- 



The Bible and National Life. i8i 

ture of Christianity, and, as with the passing years 
the evil worked itself out, a disastrous divorce be- 
tween religion and morality. This separation is 
one of the things which should never be. Religion 
is not religion if it is unmoral, while ethics without 
religion is on a basis so unstable that it furnishes no 
guarantee for a solid national life. 

It is but stating a manifest truth to add that this 
confusion as to the moral significance of the Chris- 
tian religion was not confined to the people, but in- 
fected also even their religious teachers. The stand- 
ard, intellectual and moral, of the Mexican priest- 
hood, became, as time passed, lower and lower. 
When, in the earlier years of the present evangel- 
ical movement, discussions would arise from time 
to time between the priests and the advocates of 
Protestantism, it was found that only rarely did a 
priest possess any sort of a Bible, and still more rare- 
ly did one show the most rudimentary acquaintance 
with the Bible's contents. The Roman Catholic 
Church has much to answer for; but seeing what the 
Bible has been worth to the modern world, it would 
seem that no graver responsibility can be charged 
against her than the withholding of these benefits 
from those peoples over whom she has exercised 
control. 

It is almost superfluous to point out further that 
the moral tendency of some of the abuses which the 
reform laws attempted to correct was not less grave 
than their political objectionableness. Indeed, the 



i82 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

two are most intimately connected. The corruption 
of the people by reason of the difficulties placed in 
the way of marriage, for example, was appalling. It 
was all the worse because it received a quasi sanc- 
tion on the part of the Church. No serious dif- 
ficulty was made concerning the absolution and final 
pardon of a man or woman who had lived in open 
disregard of sexual morality. The priests, indeed, 
could not afford to be exacting at this point, for 
among them the baneful effects of Rome's dogma 
of priestly celibacy were everywhere in evidence. 
As to this we have the testimony of one who, a 
priest himself, can scarcely be suspected of over- 
stating the facts through hostility or prejudice. 

With the French expeditionary forces at the time 
of Maximilian's intervention w^ent the Abbe Do- 
menech, as chaplain general, becoming later Maxi- 
milian's "director of the press." Upon his return 
to Paris in 1867 he printed a small volume which he 
called Lc Mexique tel qitil est — "Mexico as It Is." 
With engaging frankness and in that sprightly and 
direct style which seems natural to a Frenchman, he 
criticises Mexico — politically, socially, religiously. 
This semi-humorous paragraph about the priests 
will suffice both as a sample of his manner and as 
a corroboration of the statements made above : "The 
clergy carry their love of family to that of paternity. 
In my travels in the interior of Mexico many pastors 
have refused me hospitality in order to prevent my 
seeing their 'nieces' and 'cousins,' and their chil- 



Catholic Testimonies. 1S3 

dren. It is difficult to determine the character of 
these connections. Priests who are known and rec- 
ognized as fathers of famiHes are by no means rare. 
The people consider it natural enough, and do not 
rail at the conduct of their pastors except when they 
are not content with one wife. In many places the 
priests indeed marry, and their wives are known as 
such." 

The abbe then tells with evident amusement of 
how one of these women defied a merchant who 
threatened to have her arrested because she would 
not pay for a dress she had bought. "I would have 
you understand, sir," she said, "that I belong to the 
Sacred Mitre!" That is, she was entitled to the 
fuero of being tried only by a Church court ! 

Of the ignorance as to the real meaning of Chris- 
tianity and its bearing upon practical morals which 
prevailed throughout Mexico, both this abbe and 
Madame Calderon de la Barca, another devout 
Catholic, who printed a book about that country, 
give ample testimony. Madame de la Barca was the 
wife of the first Spanish minister sent to Mexico 
after the independence of that country was recog- 
nized by Spain. Passing through the United States 
on her way to Mexico in 1839, she left her daughters 
at school in Boston. Her weekly letters to them 
were so intelligent and so frank and so sprightly that 
W. H. Prescott, the historian, who heard them read 
from time to time, begged that they might be print- 
ed. Under the title of "Life in Mexico" the book 



184 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

was issued in 1843. ^^ is a most vivid picture of 
social, religious, and political conditions. The 
lady's position gave her access to everything that 
was of interest to her, and her pen-pictures disclose 
conditions that can only be taken as a stern in- 
dictment of the Church which had already, when 
she wrote, had three hundred years in which to 
impress its teachings upon a docile and not stu- 
pid race. 

It is unfortunately true, also, that the divorce be- 
tween morality and religion was made as complete 
in the matter of truth-telling and common honesty 
as in regard to social purity. The extreme poverty 
and the servile status of the lower classes brought 
with them naturally the servile vices of lying and 
stealing, against which, unhappily, the Church, with 
its Jesuitical distinction between venial and mortal 
sins and its mechanical definition of piety, set up no 
adequate barrier. Instead of providing remedies 
for the evil tendencies of a defective social and polit- 
ical organization, it indeed but emphasized those 
evils by identifying itself with the oppressions and 
the invidious distinctions by which the ignorant and 
poor were held in their unhappy estate. It cannot 
be surprising, therefore, that when the patriot lead- 
ers set out to break the shackles of the people, their 
attacks seemed, in more than one particular, to be 
launched directly against the Church. And for the 
same reason it must be evident that the burden of 
national ignorance and moral degradation, which to 



The Religious Question. 185 

this day menaces the onward march of free institu- 
tions, makes the question of Mexico's future first of 
all a religious question. 

The reader will now scarcely need be told that, in 
my opinion, the one means for assuring the stability 
of the Mexican republic, as well as the permanent 
well-being of the people who are its citizens, is the 
vital improvement of the religious situation. With- 
out attempting to settle the question as to whether 
the Roman Catholic presentation of religious truth 
is ever adequate to insure a stable national life, it 
needs only to be pointed out that in this instance its 
failure, after four centuries of opportunity, is so ab- 
solute that something more must be done. From 
the testimony of devout Catholics it is evident that 
Mexico is far below the religious ideal of even that 
Church. In other words, the Catholicism of the 
country needs itself to be purged and elevated. Un- 
prejudiced observers will be sure to add also that 
it is time that Church should no longer have a mo- 
noply. Its unchallenged supremacy during these cen- 
turies has, more than any other one thing, tended to 
its own corruption. For its own sake, therefore, it 
needs a competitor. President Juarez, with that 
clearness of vision which made him the greatest of 
Mexicans, openly expressed this opinion, and showed 
that he was serious in it by giving to tfie first repre- 
sentatives of the Protestant faith who arrived soon 
after the fall of Maximilian a most hearty welcome. 
He even went so far as to contribute for their work 



i86 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

a confiscated Catholic church, the chapel of San Jose 
de la Gracia in Mexico City. 

It is not my purpose to enter here upon a detailed 
portraiture of the darker aspects of Mexico's mental 
and moral condition. Besides being outside the pur- 
pose of this volume, this undertaking is the less at- 
tractive to me because of my firm conviction that 
in the worst of these phases of national character 
the Mexican people have been more sinned against 
than sinning. A further consideration is that con- 
ditions there, under the influence of Protestant mis- 
sions, free schools, a free press, a growing postal 
system, railways, telegraph and telephone lines, and 
the pressure of enlightened public sentiment, are 
rapidly improving. A picture true to-day would be 
too dark for to-morrow. Let us look to the bright 
future rather than to the gloomy past. 

But my effort to set forth the meaning of Mexico's 
history will have been in vain if it is not clear by this 
time that the future of liberty and progress there, 
the permanence of republican institutions, at any 
rate, is menaced chiefly by ignorant indifference to 
the privileges of citizenship, on the one hand, and, 
on the other, by widespread moral incompetence for 
their exercise. The improvement intellectually and 
morally of the mass of the country's citizenship is 
the great task of her statesmen. The exigencies of 
the problem of administration have, up to the pres- 
ent, been such that the government, though repub- 
lican in name, has been forced to preserve in a large 



Value of the Gospel. 187 

measure the character of a dictatorship. One of the 
chief evils of such a condition of things is the dif- 
ficulty of the transition from the autocratic to the 
democratic manner of government. Paternalism does 
not prepare the average citizen for the duties of cit- 
izenship. It is but human nature that he should rath- 
er lapse into indifference, and say, "U the president 
will do everything, he may." It is manifestly unfair 
to President Diaz to blame him for being somewhat 
autocratic. He governs in this way not merely be- 
cause he will, but because he must. 

There is not an ill of the body politic nor of the 
individual citizen for which the gospel is not the 
best of remedies. All that has been said of the val- 
ue of the open Bible as a civilizing agency is doubly 
true when to the Bible is added the influence of 
the living Church. Mexico needs Protestantism as 
a check and a correction for Romanism, it is true; 
infinitely more, however, does she need the pure 
gospel of Jesus Christ for its own sake. The im- 
pulse which the Protestant faith gives to intellectual 
development is but a part of its value. Even more 
essential to national well-being is the elevation of in- 
dividual character and the inculcation of self-re- 
straint and love for others which Christianity brings. 
Democracies are established on a permanent foun- 
dation not simply by enlightenment (ilustracion) 
sufHcient to cognize what are the rights of man, nor 
yet by the spirit of revolution which dares assert 
those rights in the teeth of tyranny. Freedom is 



i88 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

not license. The individual's rights must be seen as 
limited by the rights of others. Clearness of vision 
to see this and power of self-control to accept it 
are a fruit of the gospel. It is in the altruism which 
Christianity inculcates, in the practice, more or less 
perfect, of the golden rule of Christ, that the essen- 
tial institutions of democracy will find their true sta- 
bility and permanence. 

How deep and melancholy is Mexico's need of the 
consolations of the gospel as a balm for the indi- 
vidual sorrows and the unhealed moral sicknesses of 
her people, is a theme upon which I will not enter 
here. But that the influence upon her citizens of 
Protestant schools, of Protestant freedom of thought, 
Protestant probity and initiative, is to be an essen- 
tial factor in solving the national problems of this 
near neighbor of ours is a proposition which must 
commend itself to every thoughtful observer. 



CHAPTER XX. 

Modern Religious Movements. 

Only this single chapter is devoted to a history 
of Protestantism in Mexico, for the double reason 
that full accounts are accessible in the records of 
the various societies engaged there and because the 
work is going forward so rapidly that any record 
of it has only a transitory value. The constitution 
of 1857 first proclaimed religious liberty, but since 
it was a matter of ten years before that instrument 
could be enforced, no mission work of consequence 
was undertaken till the early seventies. Before the 
sixth decade of the nineteenth century was over, a 
little work had been done along the northern bor- 
der of the country, chiefly by way of distributing 
Bibles. A few schools had been begun also, mostly 
as private enterprises, but which later became mis- 
sionary agencies. Late in that decade a minister of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, Rev. H. C. Riley, 
reached Mexico City and began at once to provide 
for the establishment of Protestantism. He was well 
introduced and had the confidence and indirect sup- 
port of President Juarez. So impressed was the 
president with the value of this new movement that 
he turned over to Mr. Riley one of the confiscated 
chapels, as has been already noted, and opened the 

(189) 



igo A Ne"w Era in Old Mexico. 

way for his purchase of another and much larger 
one. 

About the same time several spontaneous reli- 
gious movements arose among the Mexicans them- 
selves, one of them in particular having crystallized 
about a French Bible brought over by one of Na- 
poleon's soldiers. It fell into the hands of a pa- 
triot Mexican soldier, at the time a prisoner of the 
French, named Sostenes Juarez. So taken was he 
with its contents that he said to himself, "This is 
a better weapon with which to fight the clevo than 
is the sword." As soon as possible therefore after 
obtaining his release he organized a little society 
and began to be a teacher of the Bible. This was in 
1865. Later he became a minister of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, South. The old French Bible 
with the manuscript articles of organization of 
that primitive society are now in the archives of 
that Church's Mission Board at Nashville, Tenn. 

Mr. Riley's work received support for a time from 
a sort of interdenominational organization, but later 
was taken over by the Board of Missions of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, 
and since that time has suffered a good many vicis- 
situdes. For a time it was decidedly the most vig- 
orous and promising of the evangelical movements, 
and did an especially valuable service in training for 
the ministry a number of bright young Mexicans. 
Mr. Riley was made a bishop of liis Church, but 
was later deposed, after wliich he connected him- 



Early Methods and Movements. igi 

self for a time with an independent movement. The 
mission of the Episcopal Church is now in a fairly 
flourishing condition. 

In 1873 th^ two branches of Episcopal Methodism 
began work, and in rapid order were followed by 
the Presbyterians (North and South and Associated 
Reformed), the Baptists, North and South, the Con- 
gregationalists (American Board), the Friends, the 
Christian Church or Disciples, and the Seventh Day 
Adventists. There are, besides, one or two individu- 
al and independent enterprises, of English origin, 
and quite recently a so-called ''Mexican National 
Evangelical Church" has arisen. 

All these mission movements have proceeded 
along similar lines and in substantial agreement 
with each other. In the early days when access to 
the people was difficult and rather violent persecu- 
tion common, recourse was had to the agency of 
day schools for children. The public school sys- 
tem was at the time chaotic, and the offer of instruc- 
tion in English was found to be a special inducement. 
Later the primary day school has been less used, 
the public schools having developed a good deal 
and the way having opened for the expenditure of 
most of the mission funds on more directly evan- 
gelistic work. It is no longer difficult to get at 
the people. They are quite willing to come to the 
preaching places provided these are kept open at no 
expense to them and they can hear a pleasant and 
interesting speaker. 



192 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

To rent or build the necessary chapels and to train 
and support the ministers to speak in them absorbs 
most of the money now employed in the active prop- 
aganda of Protestantism. School work is kept up 
mostly in boarding schools, where the young preach- 
ers are prepared for their work, and the young wom- 
en are trained under a protection and with moral in- 
fluences which the}^ could not elsewhere obtain. 

So much of gratuitous work has had some bad 
effects on the native churches which have meantime 
been organized. Having been brought to a knowl- 
edge of the gospel by provisions for worship which 
cost them nothing, and being able to secure the edu- 
cation of their choicest boys and girls in schools 
where not only tuition but often board and books, 
and sometimes even clothes, are free, has catered to 
their dependent and indigent spirit. They are there- 
fore reluctant to take upon themselves even the 
slight part of the burden of further propagating the 
churches which in their poverty they might be able 
to bear. As a result they miss to a degree the stim- 
ulation which comes of a sense of community of in- 
terest, of partnership in a great enterprise, and are 
consequently often but loosely attached to their new 
faith. Sometimes also the young men and women, 
carefully educated for careers of service in the 
Church, drift away from it when their training has 
been finished, into more attractive or lucrative pur- 
suits. 

This is but one phase of that gravest of all mis- 



Missionaries vs. Natives. 193 

sionary problems, to wit, the supply and equipment 
of an adequate force of native workers, and through 
them the establishment of an independent and self- 
propagating native Church. Missionaries from an- 
other country can serve as pioneers. They can map 
out the territory, plant the lines, clear away the pri- 
mary obstacles. They can serve as managers, teach- 
ers, and advisers. They can superintend the found- 
ing of schools, the building of chapels, the inaugu- 
ration of a literature. But after congregations are 
gathered and converts are united into churches, 
then only those to the manner born can become .suc- 
cessful pastors. It is clear therefore that the early 
development of the native church will depend upon 
the quality of the native ministry. The training of 
these ministers is at once the most important and the 
most difficult of the missionary's tasks. 

To a limited extent advantage has been taken in 
Mexico of hospitals and medical work. The recep- 
tion by the Mexican people of this class of work has 
been heartier than one would have expected, and 
such work will doubtless be extended in the future. 
The Methodists have at present establishments of 
this kind at Guanajuato and at Monterey, and the 
Adventists at Guadalajara. 

The British and Foreign Bible Society, which sent 
an agent to Mexico in the .sixties, and the American 
Bible Society, to which it later yielded the entire 
field, have been powerful agencies in the promotion 
of religious truth there. I have already spoken of 
13 



194 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

the almost magical effect wrought by the reading of 
the Bible upon those who, though Christians in be- 
lief and intention^ are nevertheless very much in the 
dark as to the true nature of Christianity. So no- 
table is this that all the evangelical missions openly 
and freely acknowledge their dependence on these 
societies which disseminate the Christian Scriptures. 
For many years the American Bible Society has cov- 
ered Mexico with a network of agencies. Its col- 
porteurs are everywhere. They precede the mis- 
sionary and return again to reenforce him. Loyalty 
to the Bible and enthusiasm for its propagation and 
acceptance form a common standing-ground for di- 
verse societies and denominations, and enable them 
to present to this extent, at least, a solid front to the 
hostility of Romanism. 

It is needless to say that the work of the Protestant 
missions, up to the present, has been well-nigh ex- 
clusively among the people of the lowest social stra- 
tum. This has been the history of religious move- 
ments in most nations. The poor, those who have 
nothing to lose and all to gain ; the humble, who are 
thereby also docile ; the ignorant who, being ignorant, 
are willing to be instructed, — among such our Lord 
himself did his work, and from his day to this mis- 
sionaries have followed in his footsteps. This fact, 
however, leads many observers to underestimate the 
Protestant movement in Mexico. More than one 
prominent Mexican, of the governing class, have 



Significance of I^rotestantism. 195 

within recent years represented Protestantism there 
as insignificant. 

But it is far from it. In the first place its num- 
bers make it already significant, as will appear from 
the statistics appended to this chapter. Moreover, 
for every communicant there will be an average of 
two or more friendly ^'adherents," besides one or 
two children. The statistics of communicants may 
therefore safely be multiplied by five in order to ex- 
hibit the real Protestant population. Nor is this all. 
For the present only the poor are among the con- 
verts. The well-to-do have no disposition to mix 
with these. They are also bound by many social and 
commercial bonds. A change of religion would cost 
them too much. And Protestantism seems to them 
cheap and lacking in prestige. Nevertheless, it will 
prove, when they really come to know about it, far 
more congenial to them than is Catholicism. Al- 
ready many of them are Catholics only in name. 
And the day is not far distant when the evangelical 
faith will begin to make inroads especially among 
the liberal-minded who openly declare their dislike 
of the clergy and their ways, and who are therefore 
trying, as best they may, to get on without religion. 

Besides, those who are accepting the gospel in 
poverty and in humility, who have occupied hither- 
to an insignificant place in national affairs, are now 
being elevated by forces which will soon make them 
an important element in their country's welfare. 
The lower classes will not remain down when they 



ig6 A New Era in Old Mexico. 

acquire the virtues and the intelUgence which shall 
fit them to compete with those who have heretofore 
always been their unchallenged superiors. Thus 
pressure both from above and from below is coming 
to, bear on the indurated social stratification of Mex- 
ico. It will not be many decades till these ancient 
barriers to a true democracy are shattered. 

The territory of Mexico is pretty well covered by 
the several societies engaged in missionary opera- 
tions. There is no great deal of friction among 
them, but rather a decided spirit of good will and co- 
operation. Nearly all the centers of population have 
one or more stations, and the work in isolated towns 
and villages is not infrequently more genuine and 
progressive than in the cities. There is not a great 
deal of strictly rural life among the Mexicans, who 
are social in their nature and .spontaneously gather 
into villages. 

The large and homogeneous groups of Indians in 
various mountainous sections of the country have 
not yet received the attention from the several boards 
and their missionaries which their numbers warrant. 
It will be well if in the early future this ground be 
carefully canvassed to see if it will not be worth 
while to furnish these peoples with missionaries and 
a literature in their own dialects. They have but 
a slight knowledge of Spanish, and are by every to- 
ken legitimate objects of missionary endeavor. 

Ever since President Diaz got his administration 
in hand he has earnestly striven to uphold the con- 



Diaz and Protestantism. 197 

stitutional provisions on the subject of religious lib- 
erty. The laws of Mexico afford ample protection 
for the celebration of worship according to the dic- 
tates of every man's conscience. Of course it hap- 
pened often in the early years of Protestantism that 
ignorant and prejudiced priests incited the people to 
acts of persecution, and the local representatives of 
the civil government refused to punish or repress 
these breaches of the peace. But the attitude of the 
president has gradually become well known, and no 
petty official can now afford to neglect his duty at 
this point under penalty of losing his office. The 
president is not openly friendly to Protestantism, but 
is annoyed and humiliated by any sort of a religious 
riot, since he considers it a reflection upon the civili- 
zation of his country. 
13* 



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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. 

The scarcity of historical books concerning Mexico has 
been noted. Several volumes o£ H. H. Bancroft's compre- 
hensive "History of the Pacific Coast" are devoted to Mexico, 
and the same writer prepared, or had prepared, a "Popular 
History of the Mexican People." The latter is colorless and 
unsatisfactory; the former voluminous and inaccessible. The 
histories of Noll, Ober, and Mrs. Hale are mere brief compila- 
tions. Noll's "From Empire to Republic" is a fairly instruct- 
ive outline of the political history of the country from 1810 
to 1870. It is deficient in perspective and in grasp upon the 
real meaning of events. The author has inserted in it an 
admirable bibliography, to which the reader is referred. Of 
serious books not specifically historical the best are Thomp- 
son's "Recollections of Mexico," Abbott's "Mexico and the 
United States," Butler's "Mexico in Transition," and Brown's 
"Latin America." Of a more popular type are Madame de la 
Barca's "Life in Mexico," Bishop's "Old Mexico and Her 
Lost Provinces," Ober's "Travels in Mexico," Gooch's "Face 
to Face with the Mexicans," etc. Lummis's "Awakening of 
a Nation" is sensational and unreliable. Romero's "Mexico 
and the United States" contains much valuable matter. 

(199) 



INDEX. 



ACAPULCO, 76. 

Allende, 68, 72, y^, 
Altamirano, 61. 
Alvarez, 104. 
Alvarado, Pedro, 47. 
Apodaca, 82. 
Azcapotzalco, 29. 
Aztecs, 20, 28, 29. 

Beans, 10. 

Benito Juarez : see Juarez. 
Bible, 180, 181, 190. 
Bravo, Nicolas, 78, 90. 

Calderon de la Barca, 183. 

Calleja, JZ, 76, 77, 80, 81. 

Carlota, 123, 127. 

Casas (Padre de las), 56. 

Cemeteries, 177, 178. 

Chichimecs, 21, 29. 

Chihuahua, 74. 

Church party, 97, 174. 

Cinco de Mayo, 120, 

Citizenship, 135. 

Civil marriage, 177. 

Clergy, 151, 182. 

Coffee, 12. 

Colegio de San Nicolas, 66, 

7^, 143- 
Comonfort, 108, 109, 115. 
Congress of Chilpancingo, 79. 
Consejo de las Indias: see 

Royal Council. 



"Constitution, 92, 103, 108. 
Cortes (Spanish), 83, 86. 
Cortez, 38, 40, .12, 46. 
Cotton, 10. 
Creoles, 66. 
Cuba, 148. 

Diaz, Porfirio, 135, 153, 155, 
158, 160, 161, 163. 
.Diego Velasquez, 38. 
Dominguez, 67. 
Domenech, Abbe, 182. 

Farias : see Gomez Farias. 

53. 
Egypt, 27. 
Encomiendas, 57. 
Eugenie, 113. 

Farias : see Gomez Farias. 
Ferdinand VII., 61, 82, 86, 96. 
Foreign investments, 167. 
Franciscans, iii. 
French Intervention, 124, 151. 
Fueros, 89, 92, 103, 105. 

Gomez Farias, 92, 105, 108, 
. 109, 133. 
H;S^onzales, Gen. Manuel, 165. 

Government, 65. 

Grito, 69. 

Guanajuato, 70. 

Guerrero, 83. 

(201) 



202 



Index. 



Henequen, II. 

"^Hidalgo, Padre, 66, 67, 70, 72, 
Human sacrifices, 31. 

Iglesias, Jose Maria, 160. 

Indians, 23, 24, 138, 146, 180. 

Indian corn, 9. 

Indian dialects, 26. 

Inquisition : see Spanish In- 
quisition. 

Intervention : see French In- 
tervention. 

Iturbide, 83, 87, 97. 

Ixtle, II. 

Japanese, 17. 
Jecker, 118, 121. 
Jesuits, III, 112. 
Juarez, Benito, 104, 106, 107, 
109, III, 115, 130, 152, 155, 

157. 

Lerdo de Tejada, Miguel, 92. 

Leredo de Tejada, Sebastian, 
153, 157, 159, 160. 

Leyes de Reforma: see Re- 
form Laws. 

Maguey, ii. 

Marina, 40. 

Marquez, Lorenzo, 117, 128, 

130. 
Masonry, 90, 
Mayas, 18, 28. 
Maximilian, 114, 122, 124, 

129, 130, 151- 
Mejia, Gen., 130. 
Mestizos, 16, 66. 



Mezcal, 11. 

Mexican coat of arms, 21. 
Michoacan, 34. 
Mina, Javier, 82. 
Mines, 14. 

Miramon, 117, 128, 130. 
Missionaries, 193. 
Mixtecs, 19. 
Moctezuma, 30, 46, 48. 
Monopolies, 65. 
Monroe doctrine, 88, 125. 
Moorish influence, 27. 
Morelia, 66, 71, 
nMorelos, 76, 81. 

Napoleon Bonaparte, 61. 
Napoleon III., 113. 115, 119, 

121, 123, 126, 127. 
National Museum, 31. 
National credit, 172. 
New Spain, 51, 54. 
Noche Triste, 49. 

Ocampo, Melchor, 92, 106, 

133- 
O'Donoju, 84. 

"Plan de la Noria," 155. 
Plateau of Mexico, 5. 
"Porfiristas," 156, 161. 
Prescott, 50, 183. 
Prieto, Guillermo, 92, 156. 
Protestantism, 189, 195. 
Public schools, lOi, 174, 175, 

191. 
Puebla, 120. 

Queretaro, 65, 67, 128. 



Index. 



203 



Railroads, 166. 

Rainfall, 6. 

Reform Laws, 103, 104, 159, 

177- 
Religious orders, 55, no. 
Religious situation, 185. 
Revolution, 59, 94. 
Royal Council, 51, 148. 
Rubber plant, 13. 
Rurales, 169. 

Santa Anna, 90, 106, 163. 

Schools, 145. 

Seward, W. H., 126. 

Silver, 13, 172. 

Spanish Inquisition, 52, 141, 

149. 
Spanish juntas, 62, 63. 
Spanish language, 26. 
Sugar cane, 10. 

Tarascan Indians, 35. 
Tariffs, 171. 



Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), 

29, 45. 
Texas, 91. 

"The Fair God," 43. 
Tlaxcala, 33, 44. 
Toltecs, 18, 20. 
Tierra caliente, 2. 
Tierra fria, 4. 
Tierra templada, 3, 4. 
Tzintzuntzan, 35. 

Venegas, 63. 
Vera Cruz, 41, 117. 
Virgin of Guadalupe, 69. 
Volcanoes, 7. 

War with the United States, 
91. 

Yellow fever, 3. 

Zacatecas, 75. 
Zapotecs, 19. 
Zaragoza, 120. 



3477-6 



n 



